Review: Tim Connell Certainly Scores With AN UNCERTAIN AGE at Pangea

Award-winning cabaret artist Tim Connell returned home last weekend.  Specifically, he returned to Pangea, his artistic home-away-from-home.  Many are the cabaret artists who favor a particular room, and even though they are comfortable in any or many, they will always return to that place where they feel most authentically themselves.  Such is the case with Tim Connell and Pangea, and with good reason, too.  Pangea is the most intimate room in town, once rivaled by The Beach Cafe, as intimacy goes, but, alas, The Beach is no more, leaving Pangea as the cabaret room that is warmest and coziest.  Tim Connell belongs in the warmest and coziest room because he, himself, is the warmest and coziest.  You see, Mr. Connell has a thing, he has a vibe, he has a style.  Nobody else does it, literally nobody, and he has it mastered, like an inventor with a patent.  Tim Connell is a living room storyteller, a man who wants to reach everyone within the four walls.  When he stands on the stage, he wants to be able to talk to the people in the seats out front, he wants to be able to look at them, to look in their eyes, and he makes it a point to do so.  Above all else, Tim Connell knows that the benefit of performing cabaret is connecting to the audience on a level that will feel personal.  How else could he, so audaciously, just stroll into the room on October 10th with no announcer welcoming him over the god mic?  As simply as a host walks in from the kitchen with a bowl of popcorn or a handful of brews, Tim Connell just strolled into the cabaret room at Pangea, touching shoulders he passed, shaking hands that reached out to him, and sauntered up to the stage to start his first-ever performance of An UnCertain Age.

Tim Connell has a history of presenting cabaret shows informed by (inspired by) his life experiences.  Take, for instance, his St. Patrick’s Day show, Lucky Me!, in which he discusses in detail his family and their Irish roots - it’s quintessential Connell.  However, no matter how many shows he has put together or how many stories of his life he has shared, nothing could be more personal than the subject of this new show:  getting older.  On the 10th, Mr. Connell looked around the room and observed that SOME of his audience might relate to the tale being told, and one could actually witness a sea of chuckling heads nodding in agreement.  Not everyone at Pangea was, but certainly a number were smiling and murmuring asides filled with recognition for the experiences being recounted - things like being asked “Will that be a senior fare?” or being told, “You look great for your age!”  Are you nodding, now?  Well, that was the relatable, enjoyable journey being taken at An UnCertain Age, and even though it sounds like a comedy show (and there was comedy), Tim made sure to layer in lots of pathos, too, because he’s an actor, he’s a storyteller, he’s a man on a mission to think it out, talk it out, and turn it into art.  Happily, he has James Followell on the stage with him, providing him with arrangements that aren’t just imaginative but that fit Connell’s aesthetic, like a melding of “Satan’s Little Lamb” and “Hit Me With A Hot Note” that isn’t just fun, it’s interesting, or a quietly simple “If It’s Magic” that allows Tim to take his time - indeed, many performers could learn a thing or two from Tim about how and why not to rush through a performance.  Tim allows every moment in every song the time to breathe, as evidenced in a spectacular “Unusual Way” from Nine - this is a song that’s sung a lot, sometimes to the point of being ubiquitous, but in this case it is essential to the success of the storytelling.  With his clean voice and interpretive skills, this song that can tend to become an emotional turmoil is purely a personal expression of experience being shared matter-of-factly by memory.   There are many moments like this in An UnCertain Age, each of them made powerful by Connell’s ability to connect to the emotions, like evening highlights, performances of Neil Bartram’s “Butterfly,” made more rich by the introduction of character voices to carry the monologue forward, and Mary Chapin Carpenter’s “I Am A Town,” a song so mournful as to be felt in the pit of the stomach, which is precisely where Connell pitched and landed.   This is musical monology at its best.

Now, before anyone should get the impression that An UnCertain Age is a show of ballads, let’s move right to the aforementioned comedy, because Tim Connell loves his funny bits.  He loves to laugh, and he has a wit that is sometimes dry, others wry, and often downright naughty.  Oh, yes, there is a side of Tim Connell that leans into the lascivious, otherwise he wouldn’t be talking about the men and The Pines and the other little tidbits that raise the eyebrows and the temperature.   This new show features hilarity in Tim’s personal observations but also in his playing of songs like “He Never Did That Before” (don’t look it up - experience it in real time) and “Anything Goes” with a new set of lyrics by Director Mark Chmiel.  The balance of comedy and pathos (no tragedy here) in Connell’s show about getting on is quite even, which need surprise no one because the mixture of Tim’s theatrical background and his focused attention on his cabaret artistry have led him to the intersection of understanding between himself and his script.  One observation, though, is that the casual nature of Tim’s performance style (a lynchpin in his aesthetic) sometimes backfires on him, as hiccups in the proceedings lead him astray in his script.  Mind you, on his opening night every single person in the room was someone he knows and loves, so the option to lean into the loquacious might have been a little more prevalent than at, say, an out-of-town show populated by strangers.  And on an opening night there is always an element of nervousness as the artist lights their own path and puts the play on its feet.  In the eyes of this cabaret devotee, Tim Connell can do no wrong, and there is a certain degree of certainty that his next performance on October 25th will go off without a hitch.

One of the things that builds up the Connell mystique is the openness with which he shares his artistry and himself.  He has things to say, and in the case of UnCertain, they are important things, especially to those people who are, like he, navigating the tricky waters of moving into their third act (raises hand), that act where you have to be aware that there are fewer days ahead than there are behind, without obsessing over it, that act where you question whether you’ve done it right and how to do the next part in gratitude.  Speaking honestly, there was every chance that this production might suffer from Therapy Cabaret Syndrome, and in the hands of a different artist, most assuredly - but not here.  Connell's got this one in the bag.  Balancing out bits like a “List of things I know” (brilliant) with songs about life like “On My Way To You” (beautiful), “Laughing Matters” (profound), and “Taking The Wheel,” (thrilling), Mister Connell is checking off all the boxes, both the certain ones and the UnCertain, and he is doing it in style, with heart and humor - the two things that make up a good life and a good cabaret act.

Tim Connell returns to Pangea with An UnCertain Age on October 24th at 7 pm.  Tickets are accessible HERE.

Tim Connell has a website HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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