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.