Loungin' Around

Who: Daryl Sherman and Dave Troncoso
What: Lounging At The Waldorf: A Night of Johnny Mercer with Cole Porter Sitting In
When: April 22, 2010
Where: The Presenters Dolan at The Kranzberg Center, St. Louis

Cabaret, as I have noted in the past, is a big tent, with room for a wide variety of musical and performance styles. Anyone who doubts that need only survey the acts that have played the Kranzberg Center’s cabaret room recently. We’ve had the laid-back contemporary pop of Robert Breig, the Vegas-style glitz and volume of Lennie Watts’ Manilow tribute, the musical theatre-themed shows of Alice Kinsella and Jeff Wright, Katie McGrath’s courageous emotional vulnerability, the operetta-based vocal virtuosity of Shana Farr, and even my own tribute to Vaudeville – and that’s just within the last couple of months.

That being the case, there was certainly room in the tent for the jazzy one-night stand of Manhattan mainstay and 2009 MAC Award winner (Best Jazz Singer/Instrumentalist) Daryl Sherman.

Obviously wowed by her elegant pianism and informal, honest performance style, the small but simpatico crowd was reluctant to let her go, despite the show’s one hour and forty-five minute running time – a bit long by cabaret standards. Happily trading licks with St. Louis’ own Dave Troncoso on acoustic bass and guitar, Ms. Sherman gave her audience a generous helping of Great American Songbook standards by the likes of Porter, Waller, Rogers and Hammerstein and, especially, Johnny Mercer. Just for spice, there were also side trips to the realms of the blues (Rhodes Spedale’s “ Get Up Because It’s Mardi Gras” and a driving rendition of Handy’s “St. Louis Blues”), bossa nova (Jobim’s “Insensatez”), and mainstream pop (Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Mr. Bojangles”).

Having written all that, I would be less than honest if I failed to admit that I was not as won over as most of the rest of the audience.

The fact is, I’m not really a jazz fan. That’s not a knock on the genre or its performers, just a matter of personal taste. It’s also probably the result of having grown up listening to and playing the classics and show tunes and diving heavily into rock and R&B as a teenager. Jazz has just never been a type of music I sought out.

I mention this so that when I carp about Ms. Sherman’s occasional disservice to a song’s lyric (such as those Richard Maltby Jr. wrote for the “Fats” Waller tune that gave the evening its title) and her tendency to take considerable liberties with melodic lines and rhythms, you jazz fans can take it with a grain (or maybe a shaker) of salt. Yes, I appreciate that the traditions of this genre are not those of musical theatre, but it struck me as ironic that someone who has such great admiration for the lyrics of Mercer or Porter was so free with them. Your mileage may vary, as that of the audience clearly did.

My only real disappointment with the evening was the relatively small turnout, despite PR support from two of our leading jazz radio personalities: KFUO’s Don Wolff (who introduced the show) and my fellow KDHX volunteer Al Becker. A performer with Ms. Sherman’s credentials, it seems to me, should have gotten more support from the sizeable local jazz community. Granted, the Kranzberg isn’t known as a jazz room, but it accommodates the form nicely and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be on the radar of aficionados.

So if you love jazz, support it. You don’t have to be a fan to know it’s an endangered species these days.

To find out more about Ms. Sherman, visit her web site, darylsherman.com. For news of upcoming shows at the Kranzberg and other Grand Center venues, visit the Grand Center’s Shows and Events site at www.grandcenter.org/shows_events.

Jewel Tones

Who: Shana Farr
What: Pure Imagination
When: April 17. 2010
Where: The Kranzberg Center, St. Louis.

I love seeing actors do cabaret, and not just because I’m an actor myself. I love it because it gives the performer a chance to step out of the constraints imposed on him or her by casting directors and the rolls of the genetic dice that determined his or her appearance and voice quality. At its best, a cabaret act allows you to see the full range of an actor’s talent.

That assumes, of course, that the actor in question is ready to take that leap of faith and work beyond his or her usual range. Shana Farr does not appear ready to take that leap yet. So while Pure Imagination is unquestionably a very intelligently crafted, beautifully sung and highly entertaining show, it stays well within what would seem to be Ms. Farr’s comic operetta comfort zone. The stakes, to paraphrase Lina Koutrakos, needed to be raised to move the show from the level of “very good” to “great”.

That said, for a first show by a young classically trained artist, “very good” is – well – very good. The song selection, to begin with, is very smart and includes several numbers I hadn’t heard before – always a positive sign. The program leaned heavily on songs that were funny and that showcased Ms. Farr’s impressive technique; the Dick Scanlan/Jeanine Tesori collaboration “The Girl in 14-G”, for example, did both. Her performance was a tour de force.

The logical flow of the evening was excellent. A case in point: Ms. Farr has a parallel career as independent jewelry designer; one of her creations was given away as a door prize at the end of the evening, in fact. She used comments on her experience selling baubles, bangles and beads to men with flexible ethics to take us from Gershwin and Weill’s “My Ship” to Francesca Blumenthal’s “The Lies of Handsome Men” and thence to something I’d never heard on a cabaret stage before: a James Bond film medley. It was ingenious and funny, even if it did treat some of the songs (particularly “Diamonds Are Forever”) with a little less respect than I think they deserve. Still, how can you not like the use of a kazoo as a stand in for the braying trumpet in “Goldfinger”?

Ms. Farr did have a tendency to slip over the line from acting to indicating – not uncommon in performers with classical and operatic backgrounds, in my experience – which sometimes brought me out of the moment in her ballads. But even then her performances were so solid that I was willing to let it pass. Besides, some of the decisions she made in those ballads were quite persuasive and unexpected. Her “My Favorite Things”, for example, began in the darkness of someone trying to overcome sadness and fear by thinking of those favorite things, moving only gradually into the light. It was a insightful choice and very effective.

For her St. Louis appearance, Ms. Farr employed the talents of local musicians Amada Kirkpatrick (performing Steven Ray Watkins’ original arrangements, presumably) on piano and Jay Hungerford on acoustic bass. They played well together and it would have been nice to hear more from them – they had only very brief solo breaks – but given what was probably a fairly tight rehearsal schedule, that probably wouldn’t have been realistic.

The bottom line is that Pure Imagination is a very strong and persuasive first effort by a very talented young performer from whom we should expect to hear great things. The sparkle of her jewelry designs is matched by the flash of her performance; between the two of them, she would appear to have a shining career path ahead of her.

Shana Farr brings Pure Imagination to her home town of Columbia, MO, April 22 and 23 and will be seen in coming months in the Pittsburgh Light Opera’s Student Prince as well as a cabaret showcase at Feinstein’s at the Regency. To learn more about both her performing and design work, you may visit her web site, shanafarr.com.

Coming up at the Kranzberg: Daryl Sherman at the keyboard with Lounging at the Waldorf on April 22, followed encore performances by Alice Kinsella on April 23 and Robert Breig on April 24. For more information, you may visit the Presenters Dolan web site at licketytix.com.

Taking it Easy

Continuing my highly personal comments on some cabaret acts giving encore performances this month under the Presenters Dolan umbrella.

Robert Breig isn’t an actor, but he’s a skilled, relaxed and unflinchingly honest singer whose debut show Feels Like Home (directed by Tim Schall) returns on Saturday, April 24th. The program is, as I recall, heavily weighted towards the 1970s, with numbers by Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters and Kenny Loggins. Songs have been added for the encore, though, including at least one by Robert’s talented music director Carol Schmidt, so a more varied program would appear to be in the offing. Audiences can, in any case, expect an evening that’s “easy listening” in the very best sense of the term from an engaging and likeable performer.

For more information, visit licketytix.com.

Final Alice

Continuing my highly personal comments on some cabaret acts giving encore performances this month under the Presenters Dolan umbrella.

Alice Kineslla's show, A Stand Up Act, returns on Friday, April 23. The show is also a class act and, like Alice, very much in a class by itself. At its best, cabaret allows actors to stretch their wings and speak directly to the audience in their own words. Alice not only stretches her wings but soars in a show that shows off the many facets of here theatrical personality. The moments of high hilarity you would expect from one of our city's finest comic actors are there, but so are moments of great tenderness and sentiment that some might not anticipate. If you know of Alice mostly through her theatrical work, you will be pleasantly surprised to find out how much more there is to her talent. Al Fisher is the pianist, music director, and skilled foil for Alice’s comic hijinks.  Tim Schall directs.

For more information, visit licketytix.com.

More to come.

Dancing in the Dark

While it might or might not be true that, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously declared, "[t]here are no second acts in American lives" (and as someone who has gone through at least two acts so far I’m inclined to doubt it) there’s no question that there are second acts in St. Louis cabaret. In the coming weeks, four of them will be playing out at the Kranzberg Center under the aegis of The Presenters Dolan, and local cabaret fans would be well advised to seek them out.

Before I comment on these performers, though, a bit of full disclosure: I have worked with most of them on stage, either in theatrical productions or cabaret showcases. I have also attended the St. Louis Cabaret Conference with most of them, which tends to be a bonding experience among performers. Given my four decades of experience as a performer and critic, I think my comments on their work are still valid – one learns how to wear multiple hats after a while – but your mileage may vary.

Jeff Wright brings his show The Dance back for what is billed as a final performance on Friday, April 16th. Jeff has classic “leading man” charisma, an equally classic crooner’s voice and substantial musical theatre credentials. He brings all three to bear with great success in an evening of songs by, among others, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, Sammy Cahn, James Taylor, Jule Styne, Craig Carnelia, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and Elton John.

I’m not sure that the theme of dancing is actually sustained through the entire evening, but at the end Jeff does finish up with some actual fancy footwork in “Go Into Your Dance” (from 42nd Street), so I won’t quibble. The bottom line is that The Dance is an impressive showcase for Jeff’s vocal and acting chops, both of which are formidable. Neal Richardson, one of our finest music directors (his work on my show, Just a Song at Twilight, was a revelation), is at the keyboard.

Visit licketytix.com for more information.

More to come.

After the Ball

So, here it is over a week since my last post. What have I been up to and what have I learned?

How much time have you got?

For one thing, I learned that I actually can write and star in a cabaret show about the Vaudeville era that's entertaining, informative, and that people will actually pay good money to see. Yes, there weren't as many as I had hoped (we only sold around 60% of the house's capacity) but their enthusiasm and the warmth of their response was, frankly, pretty thrilling. Throw in the great arrangements and vocal harmonies of my music director, Neal Richardson, and the spot-on advice from my director and vocal coach Tim Schall and it all added up to the kind of experience that any performer has to envy.

In short, I now have a first-hand appreciation of why people do cabaret. There's not much money in it and the audience, even when it's large, is still small by current pop culture standards but, by Neddie Dingo, as a creative collaboration it can't be beat. There will be at least one more performance of Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville at the Kranzberg Center here in St. Louis, it's just a matter of working out at date when the space is free and my irreplaceable music director is available. Stay tuned.

Another thing I've learned in the past week is that I'm still the Quickest Study in the House.

The one thing I hate about acting, you see, is the tedious business of learning lines. It's a pain in the fundament and I try to get it out of the way as soon as possible. As a result, I tend to be one of the first ones off book. I think that might have been one of the reasons why Rich Kelly felt he could call me me the day before my cabaret show opened, ask me if I'd step into the role of Papa Doogan in Stray Dog Theatre's production of his play Mischief Moon, and have a reasonable expectation that my response wouldn't be "are ye feckin' daft, man?" Given the fact that I wouldn't even be able to look at the script until March 28th and that the show opens on April 8th it was, perhaps, foolhardy on my part to say yes. Yet, by God, here it is April 2nd and I've had the book out o' me hand since last night. And with a passable Irish accent.

"That's the stuff", as Papa Doogan would say.

It's quite a good play, by the way - a somewhat offbeat romantic comedy with elements of magical realism. The rest of the cast is also very strong; there's nothing more gratifying than working with disciplined professionals. Tickets are free, but you need to reserve by calling 314-865-1995 or visiting the web site.

But wait - there's more! Not tonight, though. It's already after 11:30 and there's a run-through tomorrow. More anon.

Yes, I can use words like "anon". I'm a writer. It says so on my Dramatic License.

Notes on the Music 12 - You Ain't Heard Nothin' Yet

[The twelfth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville. Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Lew Brown / Carl Schraubstader: Last Night on the Back Porch (I Loved Her Best of All) (1923) – One good Jolson tune from Bombo deserves another. Lest there be any doubt that this was designed as a showcase for "Jolie's" unique talents, the first verse includes his catch phrase "you ain't heard nothin' yet". Many others have performed it since, including Bing Crosby and our own St. Louis Ragtimers. The score includes a whopping total of eight (!) verses. Only Jolson could get away with that many, so I don't even try. Given my ethnic background, however, I couldn't pass up the cheesy Italian dialect patter - or the more suggestive lyrics. There might have been even more lyrics that were never recorded. The sheet music has the following note at the bottom of the page of extra verses: "For community sings or house parties continue indefinitely by substituting KISS-HUG-SQUEEZE etc for LOVE using words of first chorus: - viz I kiss her in the morning And I kiss her at night".

I'm not sure why the copyright date on this song is a year later than "Toot, Toot Tootsie" (which itself is a year later than the New York run of Bombo); it might have been added for one of the many tours of this very popular show.

Notes on the Music 11 - La Bombo

[The eleventh in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville. Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Gus Kahn, Ernie Erdman and Dan Russo: Toot, Toot, Tootsie (1921) – One of Al Jolson's signature tunes, "Tootsie" is from a show called Bombo (pictured) which, the title not withstanding, was a gigantic hit. Jolson, in his usual blackface, played a slave who gets dragged off to the New World with Columbus. The song wasn't in the original show (no "choo-choo trains" in 1492) but was interpolated by Jolson during the show's three-year tour. The altered lyrics in the second run through the refrain aren't in the printed score but are in Jolson's recording, so I regard them as Canonical. Jolson's bravura performance of this in The Jazz Singer (1927) demonstrates why he could get away with calling himself "the world's greatest entertainer".

Notes on the Music 10 - Love's Song After the Ball

[The tenth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville. Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Medley: Charles K. Harris: After the Ball (1892); Love's Old Sweet Song – The refrains of these two songs also insisted that they be combined. Sometimes songs make demands on performers and arrangers similar to those made on their authors by characters in novels and plays. The creation can direct the creator. I'll leave you to ponder the theological implications of that another day. "After the Ball" is often regarded as the first truly "popular" song, selling over five million copies. Harris went on to compose over 300 songs (despite the fact that he could neither read nor write music) and establish his own highly successful music publishing company.

Notes on the Music 9 - Nobody

[The ninth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville. Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Medley: Alex Rogers / Bert Williams: Nobody (1905); Fred Ebb / John Kander: Mr. Cellophane (from Chicago, A Musical Vaudeville 1975) – Bert Williams – or at least his hapless "Mr. Nobody" character - is often acknowledged as the inspiration for Amos Hart in Chicago. The musical and lyrical similarities between "Nobody" and "Mr. Cellophane" were so strong that the two numbers just demanded to be combined. "Nobody" was so popular that it became, for Williams, what the Prelude in C sharp minor was to Rachmaninov – a career milestone that eventually turned into something of a millstone. Williams' Ziegfeld Follies co-star W.C. Fields once described him as “the funniest man I ever saw and the saddest man I ever knew”.

Notes on the Music 8 - Sophie's Choice

[The eigth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Shelton Brooks: Some of These Days (1911) – "What a Song! Radio's Big Hit! Everybody's Favorite!" boasts the cover of the 1922 edition of the sheet music, which features a huge picture of Sophie Tucker. "I've been singing it for thirty years, made it my theme song", recalled Tucker in her 1945 autobiography. "I've turned it inside out, singing it every way imaginable, as a dramatic song, as a novelty number, as a sentimental ballad, and always audiences have loved it and asked for it." Brooks was one of many black songwriters and musicians whose work Tucker championed. His other hits include "Darktown Strutters Ball" and "I Wonder Where My Easy Rider's Gone", both of which were performed and recorded by Tucker. Mae West had a shot at the latter as well in She Done Him Wrong (1933).  Singing for Miss Tucker in my show is my guest star, Anna Blair.

Notes on the Music 7 - Local Color

[The seventh in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Andrew B. Sterling / Harry von Tilzer: Under the Anheuser Bush (1903) – This glorified advertising jingle was a hit not only in the USA but – under the title "Down at the Old Bull and Bush" – in the UK as well, where it became a regular part of Florrie Forde's act. The Old Bull and Bush was (and still is) an historic pub near Hampstead Heath, so it probably seemed a logical substitute for the name of a St. Louis brewery that was unknown in Britain at the time. The similarity to the 1902 von Tilzer song "Down Where the Wurzburger Flows" is, I expect, far from coincidental. The two German folks songs quoted in the refrain - "Du, du liegst mir im Herzen" and "Oh du lieber Augustin" – were still in the air when I was a kid, but are probably fading now.

Andrew B. Sterling / Kerry Mills: Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis (1904) – Until I actually started learning this song, I had no idea that the verses (but not the chorus) are all in limerick form. I also had no idea there were so many. The song was immensely popular; the sheet music cover features a picture of Gus Williams (who introduced it) along with the words "also sung with great success by" followed by a list of nearly twenty vaudeville stars including Nora Bayes. Billy Murray is absent from the list even though he did record it, along with nearly everything else from the period.

Notes on the Music 6 - Forward Into the Past!

[The sixth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Grant Clark and Edgar Leslie / Maurice Abrahams: He’d Have to Get Under – Get Out and Get Under (1913) – Early adopters of technology have always had to become self-taught experts. The first motorists were no exception, as this popular novelty number demonstrates. It was a hit for Bobby North, Al Jolson and Billy Murray (pictured), among others. Murray was an early adopter himself, although in his case the technology was sound recording. Grasping the commercial potential of records (pronounced “re-CORDS” in the early days) before many of his contemporaries, Murray cranked out hundreds of cylinders and discs for every major company. With a sharp tenor voice and impeccable diction, he was the ideal performer for the early days of the medium.

Ida Emerson and Joe Howard: Hello, Ma Baby (1899) – Howard and Emerson were a vaudeville team who had great success with this number about the early days of the telephone. The sheet music sold over one million copies – a stunning achievement at the time. Other hits by the team include “Good Bye, My Lady Love” (1904) and “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now?” (1909). This is another one that required minor lyrical surgery to avoid offending a contemporary audience. Chuck Jones fans (and you know who you are…) will recognize it as the theme song of Michigan J. Frog in “One Froggy Evening”.

Edgar Leslie and Burt Kalmar / Pete Wendling: Take Your Girlie to the Movies (1919) – Long before songs from movies were common, songs about movies were all the rage, with titles like “Let’s Go in to a Picture Show” (1909) and “Mary Pickford, the Darling of Them All” (1914) gracing piano benches. Advice columnist Beatrice Fairfax (actually New York Evening Journal reporter Marie Manning), who is mentioned in the first verse, also turns up in the Gershwins’ “But Not for Me”, for those of you who keep track of those things. And for those of you who think of Billie Burke (pictured) primarily as Glinda or Mrs. Cosmo Topper, be aware that in 1919 she was, as they say, “hot stuff”. She was also Mrs. Florenz Ziegfeld.

Notes on the Music 5 - Carolina in the Morning and the Moon at Night

[The fifth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Jack Norworth / Nora Bayes and Jack Norworth (pictured): Shine On, Harvest Moon (1908) – Nora Bayes had a spectacular career, even if it was cut short by cancer (she died at age 47). She was one of the superstars of the vaudeville stage and, along with Al Jolson and Bert Williams, one of the biggest sellers in the early days of the recording industry. She toured with her own retinue and had a private train car – the early 20th-century equivalent of a Lear Jet. She even opened her own theater on West 44th Street in Manhattan. The song has been recorded innumerable times over the last century, but my personal favorite remains the one Leon Redbone did in 1977.

Gus Kahn / Walter Donaldson: Carolina in the Morning (1922) (Additional music and lyrics by Neal Richardson and Chuck Lavazzi) – Kahn and Donaldson produced some of the most enduring hits of the previous century. This classic “charm song” is one of the most irresistible, but others include “Makin’ Whoopee”, “My Baby Just Cares for Me”, and “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby”. The song was introduced in The Passing Show of 1922 by William Frawley (pictured), who would later achieve fame as the garrulous Fred Mertz in I Love Lucy.

Notes on the Music 4 - Rings on My Fingers, Birds on Her Hat

[The fourth in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Blanche Ring (yes, really) introduced this in the 1909 musical The Yankee Girl. The composer of record for the show was Silvio Hein, although that didn't stop the producers from inserting this song as well as a Sousa march. What it has to do with Yankees in general or Yankee girls in particular is obscure, possibly because Broadway shows back then were often little more than long-form musical revues, in which the plot was only an excuse for the songs and specialty acts. Those familiar with the song in its original form will note that I have taken a couple of minor liberties with a lyric which, in its original form, has somewhat racist overtones.

Arthur J. Lamb / Alfred Solman: The Bird on Nellie’s Hat (1906) – Women were, by any definition of the term, an oppressed group a century ago, but that didn’t stop smart, savvy women from showing up in songs like this one or the somewhat ruder “Cows May Come and Cows May Go But the Bull Will Go on Forever”. “Nellie’s Hat” was embraced by a number of female vaudevillians as well as by British music hall star Ada Reeve (pictured), whose picture graces the cover of the only copy of the sheet music I was able to locate (at an Australian library; let’s hear it for the Internet).

Notes on the Music 3 - I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

[The third in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Harry Carroll's composer credit would probably have come as a big surprise to Chopin (it's based on a theme from his 1834 Fantasie-Impromptu) if he hadn't been dead. Of course, if he hadn't been dead it would have been a surprise to everyone since he would have been 107 years old. It was written for a 1918 show entitled Oh, Look!. where it was sung by Harry Fox (credited by some with the invention of the Fox Trot dance step) and danced by Rosie and Jenny Dolly (a.k.a. the Dolly Sisters) who were noted for their unique synchronized dance act as well as for their sybaritic lives.

Notes on the Music 2 - Bring Back Those Wonderful Days

[The second in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Darl Mac Boyle / Nat Vincent: Bring Back Those Wonderful Days (1919) (Additional lyrics by Chuck Lavazzi) – No matter where you are in time, things always seem to look better in the rear-view mirror even if (to stretch the metaphor to the breaking point) objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear. America was not a jolly place in 1919 (see Kevin O’Morrison’s play Ladyhouse Blues for a stark illustration of that). Darl Mac Boyle’s original lyrics get all misty-eyed about “the dinners for a quarter”, “the milk without the water”, “the eggs at ten a dozen” and how “drinking ginger ale makes us weak and pale” – a complaint about the dreaded Volstead Act, which implemented the Eighteenth Amendment and ushered in Prohibition. The boost it gave to organized crime persists to this day.

Notes on the Music 1 - Love's Old Sweet Song

[The first in a series of postings on the music in my show Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville.  Performances are March 26 and 27 at the Kranzberg Center in St. Louis; tickets at licketytix.com.]

G. Clifton Bingham / J.L. Molloy: Love’s Old Sweet Song (1884) – Appropriately enough, we begin with a song that dates from the early days of vaudeville. "Love's Old Sweet Song" was a popular hit but had its roots firmly in the European art song tradition; the grace notes in the printed score, high-falutin' imagery of the lyric and classically-inspired cover art all point in that direction. Composer James Lyman Molloy was a lawyer who wrote operettas but also edited a collection of Irish folk songs. The lines between art and popular music were less well drawn over a century ago. Collections for the amateur pianist usually mixed both types of music, so it wasn't unusual for a Beethoven bagatelle to keep company with cakewalk.

The Money Song

[Being another in a series of entries chronicling the development of my cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight - The Golden Age of Vaudeville. These are companion pieces to Andrea Braun's Talking Cabaret with Chuck Lavazzi blogs at the web site for The Vital Voice. Performances are March 26 and 27, 2010; tickets at licketytix.com.]

In my last post I noted that the good thing about being only a few weeks away from opening night is that rehearsals are now more fun than work. The bad thing is that I now have to think a lot more about finding ways to promote the show. It’s time to start aggressively selling it – and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s selling.

This is the aspect of cabaret about which one rarely hears about, despite the fact that it can help to make or break a show. A sold-out house energizes performer and audience alike while a small one tends to be dispiriting.

Most of us doing cabaret don’t have the deep pockets that are necessary to buy mass media advertising and getting free coverage – an interview or feature segment on a high-profile TV or radio outlet, for example – is difficult without the right connections. I’ve been trying to form some of those via social networking web sites like LinkedIn and Facebook as well as by schmoozing at other performers’ shows, but the jury is still out on how effective all of that will be. Whatever name recognition I have as a result of decades of exposure as an actor and critic locally will hopefully come into play here but there, too, I really don’t know how much impact there will be.

Basically, you do what you can and hope for the best.

That said, I’m finding that for the producer/performer on a limited budget, there are options that promise a reasonable bang for the buck. Advertising in the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis’s Studio Series programs, for example, turns out to be remarkably affordable, as is underwriting at public radio stations KDHX (where I’m on the volunteer staff) and KWMU. I haven’t yet investigated ads in the programs of other small professional companies, but am now giving it serious consideration.

Ultimately, I’m facing the classic artist’s dilemma: you want to do art for art’s sake, but if you don’t devote enough attention to the business side of the equation, you won’t get to do the art. Where’s an Emperor Franz Josef when you need one?

[Image manipulation by photofunia.com.]

The Play's the Thing

[Being another in a series of entries chronicling the development of my cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight - The Golden Age of Vaudeville. These are companion pieces to Andrea Braun's Talking Cabaret with Chuck Lavazzi blogs at the web site for The Vital Voice. Performances are March 26 and 27, 2010; tickets at licketytix.com.]

At the climax of the first act of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, there’s a shattering scene in which Salieri suddenly understands the breadth of the gulf that separates him and the overwhelming bulk of humanity from a genius like Mozart. Poring over Mozart’s scores, he is struck by not only their beauty but also by the complete lack of anything resembling errors or revisions. With a sense of awe and horror, he sees that these masterpieces were set down in fully realized form with no discernable effort on the part of the composer, as though he were dictating directly from the mind of God.

For the vast majority of creative folk, of course, the process of producing art is much more arduous. The very early stages of any project are marked by false starts, wasted effort and just plain drudgery. This is particularly true of the performing arts, where the joy of performance is always built on a foundation of exercises, rehearsals, and memorization. Whether you’re a singer, dancer, actor or musician, there’s always a period of simply learning new material that you have to get through before the words, music or choreography are so well-known that they become a part of you. At that turning point, the real joy of creation takes over and rehearsals suddenly become like recess in school – a chance to start playing.

As a performer, I live for that moment. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have come home from a rehearsal and remarked to my wife “it’s starting to be fun now”. Gone are the tedious hours of writing up dialog cards and slow, plodding rote memorization. Now it’s time to start finding the subtext, working out the subtleties of character, and finding the jewel-like moments that make up a satisfying performance.

My cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight – The Golden Age of Vaudeville is finally entering that phase. I have the words and music down, I have almost all of the patter memorized (yes, you do have to memorize lines you have written for yourself) and I’m beginning to get a sense of the flow of the show. My director Tim Schall and I still need to work out some blocking (yes, even in cabaret movement has to be motivated and planned in advance) and I have yet to determine whether or not I’ll be able to work in some choreography but I am basically, as we say in the acting biz, off book.

I know I’m at this point because I no longer have to force myself to rehearse. I’m past the hard slog of getting pitches and words right and into the creative phase. Rehearsing is now a matter of discovery and actually starts to feel less like work and more like performance.

That’s the good thing about being at this stage of the project. The bad thing?  Well, that's the subject of the next post.

[Image manipulation by photofunia.com, by the way.]

High Wattage

Who: Lennie Watts
What:  Manilow ’73–’83
Where: The Kranzberg Center, St. Louis
When: March 3 through 6, 2010

Whether you’re a Fanilow or just a Fanolennie (I’ll only cop to the latter), there was much to admire in Lennie Watts’s Manilow ’73–’83 show at the Kranzberg March 3 through 6. Indeed, with a three-piece combo and a killer vocal trio accompanying him (“backing him” hardly seems adequate), Mr. Watts’s show was, if anything, a little too much to admire for the modest confines of the Kranzberg’s 80-seat cabaret space. I never thought I’d write these words but: this is a show that, with its glitz, high gloss and often higher decibel level, would actually have worked better in the Sheldon’s normally off-putting Savoy Ballroom.

I should confess up front that I am neither a devotee nor despiser of the songs Barry Manilow wrote and/or made popular. The man has been an irresistible force in American popular music and while some of the songs he made into million sellers are pretty cheesy stuff (“Mandy” comes immediately to mind), his own compositions display a high degree of craft and intelligence that’s impossible not to admire. So even though I would be happy never to hear “Can’t Smile Without You” (which, in all fairness, Manilow did not write) again, I can’t deny that I found the evening entertaining.

Yes, the adoration of the Fanilows in the audience sometimes made me feel like a party crasher, but if you’re going to attend a show entitled Manilow ’73–’83 you can hardly complain if it attracts lovers of Barry Manilow, can you?

Besides, Mr. Watts and his fellow performers made an awfully persuasive case for this material. Mr. Watts, as I noted in my review of his appearance at Savor two years ago, is an engaging mix of singer, actor, rock ‘n’ roller and stand-up comic who well deserves that label “tender dynamo” laid upon him by my fellow Cabaret Scenes contributor Elisabeth Ahlfors. He loves this music to bits, as he notes early in the show, for “the emotion, the theatricality and those damn key changes”. That love infused the evening with so much joy that only a die-hard Manilow hater could have come away un-touched.

A major contributor to the show’s success is music director and pianist Steven Ray Watkins. As he did in his 2007 appearance with Mr. Watts, Mr. Watkins proved to be a dynamic performer and canny arranger. The vocal lines for the back-up trio were so interesting that they sometimes stole focus from Mr. Watts and the band—or maybe it was just the precision and charisma of the singers. Dubbed “Lady Flash 2010” by Mr. Watts, the ensemble consisted of his New York collaborators Tanya Holt and former St. Louisian Angela Schultz and current St. Louisian Kay Love. All three women are impressive performers in their own right. As a group, they nearly stole the show.

Rounding out the solid septet were Jay Hungerford on bass and Jim Guglielmo on drums. It was a tight squeeze getting everyone up there—the women had to stand to one side, in fact—but the results were certainly impressive in a 1970’s retro way. Even John “JT” Taylor’s lights caught the rock concert rock concert/disco ambience.

Had Mr. Manilow been able to see the show, I expect he would have been pleased. The Fanilows certainly were and, ultimately, that’s the target audience. The rest of us were along for the ride, and it was mostly fun.

Rounding out March at the Kranzberg cabaret room are Katie McGrath’s Second Chances March 18 and 19; Joy Powell’s Feminine Standard on March 25; and my own show, Just a Song at Twilight: The Golden Age of Vaudeville, March 26 and 27. For tickets, surf on over to licketytix.com. The Cabaret St. Louis season continues April 7 through 10 with Eric Michael Gillett’s Wide –screen Songs From and About Movies; visit cabaretstl.org for details.

Finally, fans o' Lennie's can catch up with him at lenniewatts.com.

The Daly Show

Who:Tyne Daly and John McDaniel
What: Songs
Where: Cabaret St. Louis at The Kranzberg Center, St. Louis
When: February 10 through 13, 2010

Hiding behind the deceptively simple one-word title of Tyne Daly’s show is a canny assemblage of music both familiar and obscure from 1904 (George M. Cohan’s “Life’s a Funny Proposition After All”) to 2006 (Kristen Adreassen and Megan Downes’s infectious “Crayola”, winner of the John Lennon award that year), all delivered with the skill you would expect from a veteran actress backed by an award-winning music director. The act, which concluded its national tour this week in Mr. McDaniel’s home town, got a warm reception from the local audience, even if it was nothing like the unabashed love fest Sutton Foster got the week before.

When I’m wearing my Critic Hat (as opposed to my Performer’s Hat, which has the flashing lights), I always try to notice whether or not my reactions are in synch with those of the rest of the house. This time we all seemed to be in agreement: Ms. Daly, Mr. McDaniel and director Dave Galligan gave us a solid, entertaining show – a good evening of cabaret that deserved and got appreciative applause. When we stood, however, it was to put on our coats and leave, not to continue the adulation.

That’s not a criticism so much as a reflection of great expectations. Ms. Daly is an actor with a long and distinguished career on stage as well as film and television. When you attend a cabaret show starring the woman who not only copped a Tony for her Mama Rose but also boats a string of impressive screen appearances, you expect to be not just entertained (which I certainly was) but blown away (which I wasn’t). Given the amount of talent on stage that seems odd.

Part of the problem, I think, was that Ms. Daly appeared not yet completely comfortable with the cabaret form - her patter is occasionally a bit too discursive, for example - and she may still be relying too much on her substantial acting chops. There were times when she seemed to be playing Tyne Daly doing cabaret rather than being Tyne Daly doing cabaret. It’s a fine line that even the best of us can cross without realizing that we’ve done so. Ms. Daly also seemed somewhat physically uncomfortable, but I attribute much of that to the sky-high heels she was wearing. Yes, they looked very cool, but I defy anyone to be at ease in those puppies.

All that said, the fact is that Songs was really quite an impressive show. Ms. Daly was always in the moment. She knew what every song meant and made sure that we knew as well. Big show stoppers like “Fifty Percent” (from the 1978 musical Ballroom) were appropriately impressive, ballads like the Jule Styne/Carolyn Leigh collaboration “Killing Time” (a kind of haiku version of “Losing My Mind”) were compelling, and novelty songs like “Row Row Row” (Ziegfeld Follies of 1912) were great fun.

John McDaniel’s great arrangements and accompanying vocals deserve considerable praise as well. Turning the Buddy Holly hit “Oh Boy” into a ballad, for example, was a nice touch, as was the extended piano solo that concluded Randy Newman’s “Real Emotional Girl”. As those of you who saw him at Savor back in 2007 can attest, Mr. McDaniel is a compelling performer in his own right; Ms. Daly couldn’t have asked for a better collaborator.

Judging from the fact that she premiered a brand-new act at Feinstein’s in New York last month, it looks like Ms. Daly is in cabaret to stay – as well she should. She’s got the smarts, the talent and the ability to work with some of the best people in the business. I don’t see any reason why she can’t make her mark here as well as she has in other areas.

Besides, as anyone who was fortunate enough to see Kitty Carlisle Hart at the Savoy Ballroom back in 2006 can attest, the cabaret tent is big enough to hold you right to the end of your creative life. It’s one of the reasons those of us in our “September Song” years (full disclosure: Ms. Daly is only two years older than yours truly) are not hesitant to enter.

Ms. Daly doesn’t have a web site, so I can’t tell you what she’s up to next, but next on the Cabaret St. Louis calendar is St. Louis’s own Lennie Watts with a Barry Manilow tribute March 3 through 6; you can find out more at cabaretstl.org. Between now and then, the Kranzberg will host Robert Breig (February 17 and 18), Jeff Wright (February 19 and 20 with an encore on April 16), Alice Kinsella (February 26), Christina Rios (February 27) and Monya (February 28) as part of the Presenters Dolan’s array of local cabaret talent; see licketytix.com for more information.

Fostering Talent

In his highly flattering introduction to Broadway star Sutton Foster’s wildly successful fund raising appearance at the Sheldon Thursday night (February 4) for Cabaret St. Louis, Mike Isaacson noted that one definition of cabaret is “when a great song meets a great soul”. Evaluating Ms. Foster’s soul is far beyond my abilities as a critic, but as far as both her songs and singing are concerned the evening met that definition and then some.

If you’ve heard any of Ms. Foster’s Broadway cast recordings you already know that she has technique to burn. Yes, hers is a classic “Broadway belter” instrument (making the traditional cabaret microphone largely unnecessary), but it’s a finely tuned one the can do pianissimo as easily and attractively as fortissimo. Her voice is also seamlessly integrated, top to bottom (although she used the former more than the latter, I thought), so the overall effect was really quite impressive. There were places were her elocution could have been better but, really, that’s quibbling.

Ms. Foster is, of course, more than just a pretty face and spectacular voice. On stage she radiates a self-effacing cheerfulness that’s instantly charming and demonstrates the kind of solid acting skills you’d expect from someone with her resume. If I have a complaint, it’s that her resume was also, for the most part, the alpha and omega of her patter. Only at the very end of the show, in the introduction to an impressive but unsurprising performance of Sondheim’s “Being Alive”, did we get a glimpse into her personal life.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, of course. Her resume is, after all, a remarkable and interesting one, and the biographical aspect of cabaret can be (and all to often is) overdone. It’s just that I would have welcomed a little bit less of Sutton Foster the star and a bit more of Sutton Foster the person. Your mileage may vary.

While ostensibly a solo act, a good cabaret show is always, I think, a team effort. In this case, the team of Ms. Foster, her music director and pianist Michael Rafter and her director Mark Waldrop was a winning one. The program, to begin with, was nicely balanced between old favorites like “Something’s Coming” (which seems to be everyone’s favorite opening number) and less-familiar material such as the 1957 Dakota Staton hit “The Late, Late Show” and “Say That” - re-write of the Paul Denniker/Andy Razaf classic “S’Posin’” intended for and then dropped from Thoroughly Modern Millie. There were a few lovely ballads such as the classic “Once Upon a Time”, delightful novelty numbers like “Air Conditioner” by Christine Lavin (who apparently doesn’t know how to write a bad song) and, above all, show stoppers along the lines of Drowsy Chaperone’s “Show Off” and (inevitably) Millie’s “Gimme Gimme”.

Mr. Rafter is a talented and sympathetic accompanist as well as an ingenious arranger. Evidence of that showed up early in a medley that skillfully blended songs from three of Ms. Foster’s Broadway hits – Annie, Millie and Little Women – into a seamless whole and continued in his inventive piano parts for simple pop songs like “Sunshine on My Shoulder” and “Up on the Roof”. As for Mr. Waldrop, it’s hard to tell where his ideas end and Ms. Foster’s begin, but whoever came up with the amusing conceit of what I’d call the “Random Show Stopper Moment” surely deserves praise.

The gimmick is that Mr. Rafter selects the titles of five songs from a three-ring binder labeled (I think) “The Big Book of Really Really Hard Songs”, drops them into a gaudy goblet, and has an audience member pick one for Ms. Sutton to sing. It appears to introduce an element of improv show randomness into the evening and perhaps it does, although I suspect that someone with Ms. Foster’s professional acumen would have rehearsed everything in that book well in advance. Certainly her performance of the selected song – Stephen Schwartz’s lovely “Meadowlark” – was a solid as one could want. So, for that matter, was her second dip into the goblet for what was either the third or fourth encore of the evening, Schwartz’s “Defying Gravity”. Still, theatre is all about illusion and you can’t argue with success. She sounded great and her fans – which is to say, nearly all of the audience – loved it.

I say the audience consisted mostly of her fans, by the way, because of the overwhelming enthusiasm of their response. When people start clapping the minute the lights go down and give the performer a standing ovation as soon as she walks on stage, it’s hard not to feel as though you’ve been transported back in time to an early Beatles concert. I mean, nobody screamed, fainted or threw unmentionables, but this was certainly a level of affection that one rarely sees at Cabaret St. Louis shows. Hence the well deserved multiple encores.

This performance of An Evening With Sutton Foster was the first in a series of tour dates, so those of you outside of St. Louis may soon have a chance to appreciate this sparkling talent for yourselves. Visit her web site, suttonfoster.com , to find out where she will be and when. As this is being written, she has appearances scheduled in Cleveland, San Francisco, Naples (FL) and Charlotte (NC). For those of you here in St. Louis meanwhile, the 2010 Cabaret St. Louis season kicks off officially with Tyne Daly and our own trusty and well-beloved John McDaniel February 10 through 13; visit cabaretstl.org for details.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Norah?

Continuing with a look backstage as we assemble my cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight...

The Norah Bayes/Jack Norworth classic “Shine On, Harvest Moon” presents a challenge. The song is so well known that a straight approach runs the risk of being boring. Granted, it has probably been years since anyone actually sang the song as written, but the music is so filled with the elements of ragtime, blues and the first stirrings of what would soon become known as jazz that I thought a more contemporary approach would be fun.

We started out with a kind of “Fever”-style walking bass for the verse but had trouble moving the idea forward in the refrain. At one point Neal shook his had and said “I can’t get out of ragtime!” Much discussion and playing around with the arrangement followed. At one point, the following exchange took place:

Neal: You know, I really feel that a kind of blues or rock approach would work. You should go back and listen to your old Bessie Smith records.
Chuck: I don’t have that many Bessie Smith records.
Tim: Chuck, you’re never going to be Bessie Smith anyway.
Chuck: True on multiple levels.
Tim: What you were kind of doing that last time around was more Al Jolson.
Neal: So maybe we need a little of both.
Tim: Yeah, we need the illegitimate love child of Al Jolson and Bessie Smith. Chuck: Well that would be….that would be Sophie Tucker.

Much merriment followed. Had we possessed custard pies, they would no doubt have been thrown.

I’m still not sure where “Harvest Moon” is going but, like Gershwin’s Porgy, it’s on its way. At our last rehearsal, it had morphed into an upbeat, jazzy number with heavy Jolson accents; I think that might be its final form.

Next: Mr. Nobody.

Bring Back Love's Old Sweet Song

Continuing with a look backstage as we assemble my cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight...

“Love’s Old Sweet Song” and “Bring Back Those Wonderful Days” are the two opening numbers, linked by a bit of patter and piano underscore. Aside from dropping the key from the original A-flat to a more bass-friendly E-flat, not much changed in the first song. This is where the show gets its title (“Just a song at twilight” is the opening phrase of the refrain) and also the opening nostalgic mood.

The patter leading to “Bring Back Those Wonderful Days”, however, got cut in half and the song itself got some major surgery. By the time we were finished, the first verse had been dropped and the second rewritten and moved in between the two refrains. I had substituted new lyrics of my own devising for the second refrain as well.

In its original form, “Bring Back”, which dates from 1919, is a wistful yearning for more prosperous times. The country was in the grip of a both a massive recession and Prohibition was just around the corner, so life probably didn’t seem like much fun. In its new form, the nostalgia is musical, not historical. I have no nostalgia for the world of 1910; any time period predating the invention of painless dentistry is not for me.

By the time we were finished, Neal and I agreed that we had a solid opening number. Well, that’s one hurdle down, anyway.

Next: how do you solve a problem like Norah Bayes?

Life is a Cabaret, Part 3

[Being the third in a series of entries chronicling the development of my cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight - The Golden Age of Vaudeville. These are companion pieces to Andrea Braun's Talking Cabaret with Chuck Lavazzi blogs at the web site for The Vital Voice. Performances are March 26 and 27, 2010; tickets at licketytix.com.]

It’s axiomatic among actors that your approach to a role inevitably changes as you perform it. In a long-running show, it’s not unusual to revise your performance as you become more comfortable with your material and with your fellow performers.

Something similar happens in the process of developing a cabaret show. You start out with an idea, a song list, and a script (“patter”) to link it all together. Once you start rehearsing the show with your music director and director, however, things start to change – often in major ways.

That’s because when you create a cabaret act you are, in effect, writing a new play starring you. That means that, in the early stages, rehearsals are as much about writing the play as they are about learning the material. At this stage, everything is subject to change.

The songs, in particular, begin the journey from their original published versions to the final customized arrangements that will mesh with the performer’s personality and the script to form a cohesive theatre piece. The music director is especially important at this point, of course, but what really happens in rehearsal is a close collaboration among the performer, music director and director.

Listening to the recoding I made of the first full rehearsal with Tim Schall (my director) and Neal Richardson (my music director), I was struck by the way we tossed ideas back and forth and how quickly our notions of what a song meant sometime changed. I'll be posting some examples in the coming days.

Life is a Cabaret, Part 2

[Being the second in a series of entries chronicling the development of my cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight - The Golden Age of Vaudeville. These are companion pieces to Andrea Braun's Talking Cabaret with Chuck Lavazzi blogs at the web site for The Vital Voice. Performances are March 26 and 27, 2010; tickets at licketytix.com.]

Cartoonist Keith Knight (The Knight Life, The K Chronicles, (th)ink) has a recurring feature called Life’s Little Victories – celebrations of the little things that go right in life (e.g. “#6173 – Randomly guessing the correct answer to a trivia question”). In researching my show, I experienced a few little victories of my own.

#1 – Finding all of the sheet music you need for free on line. Some work with Google turned up several web sites (all associated with libraries) offering scans of vintage sheet music from the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The files – usually in image formats, sometimes in Adobe PDF format – were available as free downloads, enabling me to print out exact facsimiles of the original music. Simply looking at the original cover art and ads for other songs proved to be a great way to get a feel for the period.

My biggest sources here were the Lester S. Levy Collection at John Hopkins University (http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/), Indiana University’s INHarmony collection (http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/inharmony/welcome.do), and the Detroit Public Library’s Azalia Hackley Collection (http://www.thehackley.org/). I also tracked down at least one song – “The Bird on Nellie’s Hat” – at the National Library of Australia (http://www.nla.gov.au/digicoll/music.html).

The irony of using early 21^st century technology to track down early 20^th century resources was not lost on me.

Even more ironic, in some ways, was victory #2 – finding MP3s of thousands of Edison cylinder recordings from as early as 1890 on line, also for free. The Cylinder Digitization and Restoration project at the University of California at Santa Barbara (http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/) proved to be a treasure trove of vintage performances by the giants of the vaudeville era. The collection includes not only musical performances, but dramatic and comedic monologues, language instruction and even political speeches. As a window to a world now long gone, the site is priceless.

With a cabaret show, of course, finding the sheet music is only the beginning. Cabaret artists rarely, if ever, perform a song strictly as written. This is an intensely personal art form, which means that songs need to be arranged to suit the performer. And arrangement, as singer and teacher Lina Koutrakos observes, is like a custom-tailored suit. It’s designed to make the person for whom it’s designed look (or in this case, sound) as good as possible.

Which brings us to my first meetings with my musical director, Neal Richardson.

I first met Neal through the St. Louis Cabaret Conference. He was the musical director for the 2008 Alumni Showcase, at which I was performing “Take Your Girlie to the Movies” – a 1919 novelty that’s included in my current show. We quickly discovered a common love of vaudeville and ragtime-era music, so when I decided to take the plunge he was the first person I contacted. He shared my enthusiasm for the project, and so began our collaboration.

Neal, by the way, is a very busy man. In addition to being much in demand as a pianist and music director, he also teaches music theory and musicianship at Webster University, serves Samuel United Church of Christ as organist/choirmaster and is cofounder of Early Music Saint Louis. He’s also a published composer and arranger with numerous works to his credit. I consider myself lucky to have him on my team.

What does a musical director do? In general terms, he goes over your song list with you, suggests changes in song placement and/or the songs to include or exclude. He transposes music into keys better suited to a performer’s range, changes the accompaniment to suit the performer’s intent, and even acts, when necessary, as a vocal coach (and it my case, it was necessary!). A good musical director – and Neal is certainly that – can provide insights into songs that you, as a performer, might not have considered and can have a major influence on the shape of a show.

In my case, for example, two sessions with Neal resulted in a re-ordering and reduction in length of my original song list and considerable clarification of my ideas behind the show. His arrangement of the 1892 classic “After the Ball” has turned out to be the emotional heart of the show – something I hadn’t considered until we started working together.

He also dropped the keys for nearly every song. A century ago there was no such thing as a microphone, so the stars of the vaudeville stage were invariably tenors and sopranos. Higher voices are easier to hear at the back of the house. As a result, the published scores for these older songs are nearly always in keys that are not very friendly to lower voices like mine (I’m officially a bass-baritone). We lower-voice types wouldn’t come into our own until the invention of electrical recording. Bing Crosby was the first baritone to become a major star.

So after two sessions with Neal, I had a fairly solid idea of the musical shape of the show. What I didn’t have much of yet was patter – the spoken words that knit together the musical numbers and provide context.

You’d think that this would be as easy as falling off a log for someone who was been writing about music and theatre for over forty years. If so, you might want to try falling off a log some time without landing uncomfortably on what the late President Reagan would call our kiester. Writing my own show turned out to be just a little bit more complicated than I had thought.

Of which, more anon.

[title of review]

In his gushy liner notes for the 2006 cast recording of [title of show], noted playwright Terrence McNally praises the new musical for restoring “our faith in the possibilities of theatre” and places its concern for the future of the American Musical on a par with curing cancer.

To quote the late Anna Russell, “I’m not making this up, you know”.

He doesn’t suggest that composer Jeff Bowen and playwright Hunter Bell can actually walk on water, but maybe he just ran out of space. In reality, the goals of [title of show] are far more modest and for the most part both the show and the current production achieve them brilliantly.

On paper and CD, the idea of [title of show] looks a bit flimsy: a talented songwriter and author want to write a new, completely original musical but can’t come up with a topic, so they decide (in the song “Two Nobodies from New York”) to write a new musical about a talented songwriter and author trying to write a new musical. The result is a show that’s about only itself and its creators – “talking to a mirror talking to himself”, to quote A Neil Innes lyric. It’s a potentially deadly idea if not handled with skill.

Skill, happily, is something Mr. Bowen and Mr. Bell clearly have in abundance, along with talent, a self-deprecating sense of humor, and a true love of musical theatre. As a result [title of show], despite the occasional misstep, is generally very funny, entertaining and, at times, even touching.

The non-stop musical theatre in-jokes are clever and nearly always hilarious, as are the many gags about the theatrical process itself. This is a show that cheerfully demolishes the “fourth wall” at every opportunity in an effort to make us aware of how that process works. [title of show] also offers, in songs like “Nine People’s Favorite Thing”, some thoughtful commentary on the dilemmas creative folk face in balancing the need for commercial success with the desire for artistic integrity, as well as insight into every artist’s (and, for that matter, every human’s) battles with self-doubt (“Die, Vampire, Die!”) and the difficulty of recapturing a dream lost (“A Way Back to Then”).

In short, if you’re a lover of musical theatre and/or a performing artist yourself (I confess to both), this is certainly a “must see”. And even if you’re neither of those, you’ll probably find it hard to resist the exuberance, energy and talent of the five-person cast.

St. Louis’s own Ben Nordstrom is a comic dynamo as St. Louis’s own Hunter Bell, nicely contrasting with Benjamin Howes’s appropriately restrained Jeff. If, as the real Hunter Bell writes, [title of show] “really does represent our lives”, then Jeff Bowen would appear to be the ice to Mr. Bell’s fire. It’s the classic straight man/funny guy dynamic and it works quite well.

There’s a similar relationship between the two women who complete the cast. Stephanie D’Abruzzo is utterly charming as original cast member Susan Blackwell who, at least in her fictional incarnation, is a funny, self-assured woman coming to terms with the conflict between her unsatisfying “real world” job and her desire to act. Ms. D’Abruzzo is doing so many interesting things on stage, verbally and otherwise, that she sometimes gets perilously close to stealing focus without, happily, ever doing so.

Amy Justman is Heidi Blickenstaff, the only actor in the original show who actually had Broadway experience. Ironically, she is the least confident of the bunch. Ms. Justman is well nigh perfect in the part, and provides a nice balance to Ms. D’Abruzzo’s more eccentric Susan.

Music director and keyboard player David Horstman – well known in local theatre circles for his fine work at the 88s – is music director and keyboard player Larry (originally Kansas native Larry Pressgrove). Mr. Horstman doesn’t have many lines – something that becomes one of many running gags in the show. That obliges him to do the most difficult kind of acting – reacting in character. He pulls it off nicely.

Scenic designer Scott C. Neale is responsible for the small but tidy New York apartment set. It effectively establishes the scene and mood while still leaving lots of space for the high-energy blocking and semi-choreography.

The book of [title of show] could use a bit of work. The scene in which we’re first introduced to Heidi and Susan fell a bit flat, I thought, and material chronicling the show’s fortunes after its first performance at the New York Musical Theatre Festival felt somewhat tacked-on and repetitious. That said if, as its Wikipedia page states, [title of show] is a “post-modern work-in-progress”, then we can probably expect it to evolve as it makes its way around the regional theatre circuit. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the current production and local reactions to it – including, for all I know, the works I’m typing right now – popping up in a future performance.

The bottom line is that [title of show] is a very smart and funny musical that mostly avoids the pitfalls that come with this sort of self-referential humor. If you have any interest in musical theatre at all, you really must see it. Be aware, though, that the book and songs contain plenty of what the press release calls “adult language” (and I call “the way my friends and I talk all the time”), so it’s officially recommended for “those 16 years of age and older”. Performances continue in the Rep Studio Theatre through January 31^st; for more information, you may call 314-968-4925 or visit the Rep’s web site at repstl.org.

To learn more about the ongoing multi-media project that [title of show] has apparently become, check out the official web site at titleofshow.com as well as (stop me if this gets too dizzying) the [title of show] show on Youtube. It’s nice to know that, despite branching out into “one hundred people’s ninth favorite thing” projects like Disney’s Villains Tonight! and “a new half-hour sitcom” for ABC, [title of show]’s creators remain, to some extent, true to their unique project.

Life is a Cabaret, Part 1

[Being the first in a series of entries chronicling the development of my cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight - The Golden Age of Vaudeville. These are companion pieces to Andrea Braun's Talking Cabaret with Chuck Lavazzi blogs at the web site for The Vital Voice. Performances are March 26 and 27, 2010; tickets at licketytix.com.]

The answer to the question “How did you get started on a solo cabaret act?” is very similar to the answer to the question “How did you get started on drugs?”

“I forget, man.”

No, just kidding. Actually, it’s “little by little, and now it’s too late to turn back.”

The whole thing began with an afternoon session at the 2007 St. Louis Cabaret Conference – the four-day professional workshop on cabaret and musical theatre performance that Tim Schall has been producing since 2006. The session was on “building a show”. As an exercise, we were asked to outline a show that we might like to do, paying attention to material selection, flow and the like.

The show I started to put together back then – “Celluloid Heroes: Portraits in Reel Life” – might still see the light of day. But after working at it for the better part of a year, I realized two things:

1) I wasn’t really all that passionate about that particular idea

2) This is a LOT harder than it looks.

What started me thinking about this show was a comment from my producer, Jim Dolan (of The Presenters Dolan) after the Alumni Showcase for the 2008 Cabaret Conference. The song I had chosen for the showcase was “Take Your Girlie to the Movies”, a minor vaudeville comedy number from 1919. The reception was remarkably warm, given the age and obscurity of the song, and Jim suggested that I should consider putting together a show vaudeville-era comedy and novelty songs. Webster Conservatory faculty member Neal Richardson, who acted as music director for the performance, had already said that he shared my fondness for early 20^th-century popular songs and would be interested in acting as music director should I decide to go that route.

Clearly, the Cabaret Gods were trying to make Their will known.

I was up to my eyeballs in acting opportunities at the time, though, so I filed the idea away under “something to think about when I’m not rehearsing two shows at the same time”. In the spring of 2009, between Metro Theatre Company’s To Kill a Mockingbird and the revival of the NonProphet Theatre Company’s Corleone, I had a few months to revisit the idea, and it began to take hold.

I ran some of the song ideas by Tim Schall, my vocal coach, and he was as enthusiastic. The die, finally, had been cast, and I began tackling the first big question: where the heck was I going to find all that 100-year-old sheet music?

The answer proved to be simpler than I had thought.

To be continued...

Sacred Cow

Every performing arts organization has its cash cow for the Christamas / Hannukah / Kwanzaa / Festivus / [Insert celebration here] season. Like any well-bred bovine, they hope it will generate enough money milk to help underwrite the coming season, when audiences may be less inclined to open up their pocketbooks.

For theatre groups it’s often a dramatization of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Opera companies tend to rely on Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, symphony orchestras on Handel’s Messiah and dance companies on Tchaikovsky’s 1892 bon-bon, The Nutcracker.

From 1989 through 2001 the biggest Nutcracker here in St. Louis was the one hosted by the Fox Theatre. It originally featured the State Ballet of Missouri (now Kansas City Ballet) and then (from 1997 to 2001) Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. In 2007 the Fox and Dance St. Louis brought The Nutcracker back with a bang in the form of the 1987 Joffrey Ballet production.

It’s back again this year, complete with 170 young St. Louis-area singers and dancers to complement the Joffrey artists. And once again visions of sugar plums - to say nothing of flowers, snowflakes, and mice – are dancing merrily in our heads.

The Joffrey production is everything you might expect from a world-renowned company. Designed and (with the exception of the “Land of Snow” and “Waltz of the Flowers” sequences) choreographed by the company’s late founder Robert Joffrey, the production is of the traditional “story book” variety inspired by the Russian original, the 1940 Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo version, and Joffrey’s own collection of collection of antique toys and Christmas cards. It’s visually stunning – a late 19^th-century print come to life, complete with dancing dolls and a 15-foot-tall Mother Ginger.

It was also, some roughness in the winds not withstanding, a pleasure to hear thanks to generally solid playing by the Ballet Orchestra of St. Louis. The Fox so often plays host to touring shows with reduced pit bands that it was a treat to hear something close to a full orchestra in that space.

All the elements you’d want in a polished Nutcracker were present when we saw the show on Saturday afternoon, including spectacular dancing by the principals and precision work by the ensemble and the various specialty turns in Act II. I was particularly taken with Fabrice Calmels and the astonishingly flexible Kara Zimmerman in the sinuous Arabian “coffee” duo as well as by Megan Qurioz and Temur Suluashvili as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Nutcracker Prince. Erica Lynnette Edwards was a standout as a whirling Russian nougat and Calvin Kitten impressed with his gravity-defying leaps in the Chinese dance.

Let me note that while the Act II set pieces tend to attract the most attention in Nutcracker, words of praise are also owed to the remarkable precision with which this company executed the “social dances’” sequence in Act I. Working in full Victorian costume on a reduced set, they flew through the complex contradance-inspired choreography with deceptive ease.

The entire cast, in short, deserves a hearty “bravi”. The ten-year-old princess in our party pronounced the production “awesome”. Who am I to disagree?

The Joffrey Nutcracker is an annual event in Chicago. Let’s hope it will continue be one here as well. Some things are traditional for good reasons. The Nutcracker speaks, ultimately, to the happy child in all of us. That’s someone we need to remember at this time of the year, especially with so many dark political and economic clouds on the horizon.

Upcoming Dance St. Louis events include the Ballet Folklórico De México in January, Chicago’s River North Dance Company in February, Aszure Barton and Artists in March and the Moscow Festival Ballet in April. Visit the web site at dancestlouis.org for more information or call 314-534-6622.