Category Archives: cabaret

Tweeting, posting and singing with Betty Buckley

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Betty Buckley

Onstage and online, Broadway legend Betty Buckley is electrifying.

If you’ve ever seen her perform on Broadway – perhaps in the original cast of Cats or as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard — or in concert halls large or small, you know just how electrifying she can be. Very few singer/actors connect to material the way she does.

But Buckley, at age 63, has embraced social media in a big way. On the advice of her brother, Norman, a television director, she got hooked up. Now she Tweets daily (@BettyBuckley) and posts on Facebook with regularity to her nearly 5,000 friends. To find a name for her latest concert, she asked her online followers for suggestions. The winner would receive two tickets to the show.

Buckley brings that show, called For the Love of Broadway, to the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko May 3 through 8.

On the phone from her ranch in Texas, Buckley says the new show’s title is but one of the advantages to being, as they say, wired.

“I had to learn how not to be so fixated by it,” she says. “When I was in San Francisco about a year ago, doing shows at Yoshi’s, all these Twitter and Facebook fans came, which was really a blast. It’s nice when people like my work and support. It’s nice to be in touch with them to see how they feel.”

The new show, which features music direction by John McDaniel, includes songs Buckley has loved but never had the opportunity to perform. She sometimes refers to them as “my shower songs – songs I sing in the shower but never really knew all the words to.”

Audiences members can expect songs from Avenue Q, South Pacific, The Pajama Game and Nine among others. That should please the show-music fans, of which Buckley has thousands.

But Buckley, a Texas native, has eclectic taste in music and is as likely to sing a country tune as a show tune. Her last album, Bootlegs: Boardmixes from the Road, featured eight live tracks including a new song from Michael McDonald, some country tunes and Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies,” a sneak preview of her forthcoming album, Ghostlight.

The new album is produced by T-Bone Burnett, the Grammy- and Oscar-winner behind such albums as the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou? and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss’ Raising Sand. Buckley and Burnett have known each other since high school in Fort Worth. Their mothers were friends, and at age 19, Buckley recorded her first album in Burnett’s recording studio (that album has since been re-mastered and released as Betty Buckley 1967).

Buckley recently heard the final remixes for the album, which should be out in November. “It’s the most wonderful recording I’ve ever done,” she says. “T-Bone is a genius. Some of the songs from For the Love of Broadway were cornerstones of that recording, but they’re done very differently than I do them in the cabaret setting. T-Bone calls the songs ‘my airs.’ He says, ‘I’m so in love with this recording of your beautiful airs.’ I’m so thrilled I can’t even tell you. This album is probably the truest to who I am than anything I’ve done.”

[bonus video: Betty Buckley performs “Meadowlark”]

If you listen to Buckley singing “He Plays the Violin” from 1776, which she recorded in 1969, and then listen to the live recordings from Bootlegs you hear the same singer but a very different voice.

“My voice is definitely different than when I was younger,” Buckley says. “I kinda like it. It’s richer and has more dark colors than when I was younger. As a kid I had this clarion mezzo-soprano voice. But I had some wonderful voice teachers – Paul Gavert, Joan Lader – who have helped me quite a lot. Paul really taught me to sing with a long line, with one vowel becoming the next vowel, how one thought becomes the next thought. It’s a brilliant way to approach singing. I’m so grateful I was able to learn from him. That’s how I could sing “Memory” night after night in Cats.”

As a singer’s voice changes over time, Buckley says, she is certain of one thing: a singer will always have a voice if she takes care of herself. “The voice follows who you are,” she says. “The instrument of my voice has deepened, gotten richer over time because I’ve grown as a person, changed as a person.”

Buckley has been teaching voice herself for nearly 40 years, but she credits Gavert with having a vision of her that was greater than she could have for herself.

“He was able to impart that vision to me and hold it in space with me in this long process until I could step into the potential he felt I had,” Buckley explains. “It took quite a while. That was such a gift to me when I look back. It’s so deeply touching that he would do that. I’ve always felt it was my responsibility to pass that on. I’m grateful to have an innate gift, but everything good I’ve learned to do I’ve learned from other people.”

Buckley had participated in a workshop performance of the new musical Tales of the City, which will be running at American Conservatory Theater shortly after her run at the Rrazz Room. She was rumored to be cast in the role of Mrs. Madrigal in the world-premiere production, but that didn’t work out.

This fall she’ll be back on the New York cabaret scene with a new show. Who knows? She may even ask her online followers to come up with another title. If she does, get to thinking: she says she’ll likely be doing men’s songs from Broadway shows.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Betty Buckley’s For the Love of Broadway runs May 3-8 at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Francisco. Tickets are $45-$55 plus a two-drink minimum. Call 800-380-3095 or visit www.therrazzroom.com.

Jason Graae: the funniest best singer you’re likely to see

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Collective memory will soon forget that there used to be entertainers in the grandest sense – performers who could be hilarious, could interact with audience members in wonderful (non-cheesy) ways and, when the mood was right, sing the hell out of great songs.

Sammy Davis Jr. could do that. So could Bobby Darin. And Judy Garland, and the list goes on. The entertainment world has changed a lot – of course there are still wonderful performers out there.

But I have to say, I miss the all-around entertainer, the guys and gals who could hold a Vegas stage without the need for twirling acrobats and pyrotechnics.

Broadway veteran Jason Graae is one of those old-school entertainers. You are guaranteed several things when you see him perform: you will fall under the spell of his dynamic tenor/baritone voice, and you will laugh your ass off.

We don’t see enough of this Los Angeles-based performer here in the Bay Area, but happily he’ll be at the Rrazz Room for two nights, April 3 and 4, with a brand-new show.

As if the anticipated delight of Graae wasn’t enough, he’s doing a tribute to Jerry Herman on the occasion of the composer’s 80th birthday year. Just think of it – a real entertainer doing real show tunes. It’s a show music fan’s (OK, show queen’s) dream come true.

Graae has a long history with Herman as both a friend and a collaborator. For about a decade, Graae has been a part of Hello, Jerry a concert production featuring Karen Morrow, Paige O’Hara and musical director Donald Pippin all performing Herman songs with Herman himself making an appearance.

“In terms of audience reaction, it was like a rock concert every time Jerry came out to sing ‘Mame,’” Graae says on the phone from L.A. “To work closely with him, to travel with him was such an honor.”

The touring has stopped because it simply got too exhausting for Herman, but Graae found he still wanted to sing those great Herman songs. That desire combined with Herman being honored by the Kennedy Center last fall helped Graae make a decision: he’d do his own Jerry Herman show.

The problem with this decision arose when Graae sat down with the Jerry Herman songbook. “I wanted to do every song,” the singer says. “It’s a tightrope for me because I want to get my humor in there while I pay tribute to Jerry. I want to honor his material without imposing my stuff onto it.”

Jason Graae 2

With the help of director Lee Tannen, he has fashioned Perfect Hermany: Jason Graae Sings Jerry Herman, a 70-minute showcase that hits all of Herman’s shows except Mrs. Santa Claus and Miss Spectacular. That means audiences will hear tunes from Milk and Honey, Hello, Dolly!, Mame, The Grand Tour, Mack and Mabel and La Cage aux Folles. There will also be selections from Dear World, which Graae says just might be his favorite Herman score with his hands-down favorite Herman song, “I’ve Never Said I Love You.”

The problem with singing that song is that if you’re over 18, it doesn’t quite work.

“You have to be so ingenuous, so virginal to sing it,” Graae says, indicating he is no longer either of this. “But I found another way to get in there and still pay tribute to the song.”

Happily for Graae, Herman has become cool again. With the Kennedy Center Honor, the 80th birthday and the Tony-winning return of La Cage to Broadway, the cycle has returned Herman to favor.

“People are a little cynical these days,” Graae says. “It’s easy to say that Jerry was part of a certain era and is a certain type of writer. Then you sit down to listen to the music and lyrics. They’re deceptive because they seem simple, but the message is so powerful. His optimism is contagious, and doing a show like this gives audiences permission to sit there and celebrate Jerry and have fun even if you look down a little bit on musical theater.”

There are plans afoot to record the Herman show, which is good news indeed.

“There’s no way in the world you can’t feel better listening to a Jerry Herman song,” Graae says.

[bonus videos]
Here’s a nice video tribute from a Jason Graae fan:

And here’s Graae with Megan Hilty performing “Popular” from Wicked:

Visit Jason Graae’s official website: www.jasongraae.com

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Perfect Hermany: Jason Graae Sings Jerry Herman” is at 4pm April 3 and 8pm April 4 at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko, 22 Mason St., San Francisco. Tickets are $30 plus a two-drink minimum. Call 800-380-3095 or visit www.therrazzroom.com for information.

Swept up in the Noir world of Amanda McBroom

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AmandaMcBroom

Amanda McBroom is one of those performers who make you understand why cabaret was invented. And why it still endures.

She’s warm, gracious, funny and optimistic. But she’s a sturdy realist and not without edge. This is the woman, after all, who wrote “The Rose.”

When she sings, whether it’s her own work or something by the likes of Jacques Brel, McBroom commands – and rewards – rapt attention. And she just seems to get better with age.

We’ll have a chance to see McBroom this weekend when she brings Song Noir, a show she debuted last fall at New York’s Metropolitan Room, to the Rrazz Room. It’s only three performances, so book now.

Like so many cabaret shows these days, Song Noir came about because the marketing team in New York needed a show title to market.

“Why can’t they just market me? It’s just me singing,” McBroom says on a misty morning at home in Ojai. “When I got the call asking for a title I was listening to a lot of Julie London. I love her and that sound of the ‘40s and ‘50s. So I said the show is called Noir.”

McBroom sat down with her longtime music director, Michele Brourman and started sorting through their favorite strange, dark, sexy, twisted songs. They ended up with tunes by McBroom, Brel, Cole Porter, Astor Piazzola and, for laughs, David Frishberg.

Whatever McBroom chooses to sing, she makes it an event. If you saw her years ago at the Marines Memorial Theatre in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, where, incidentally, she met and fell in love with George Ball, who would become her husband, you heard her gorgeous lyric soprano.

These days, according to the New York Times, the voice is a “a forceful, flexible pop contralto.” That was a conscious choice, McBroom says.

“It was time,” she adds. “I’m probably singing the best I have in my life with the greatest amount of ease. It’s about time and practice and trusting. My voice is one of my dearest friends right now. I don’t worry about it. I don’t push it. I challenge it from time to time – I know where she goes and where she doesn’t. And I’m comfortable with that.”

[BONUS VIDEO: Amanda McBroom performing Jacques Brel’s “If We Only Have Love” at New York’s Metropolitan Room in November 2009. Michele Brourman accompanies.]

[For more videos, visit Amanda McBroom’s YouTube channel.]

McBroom is coming off two rather extraordinary projects. The first was the 2009 release of Chanson, her long-awaited disc of Brel songs. The second is the musical for which she has written lyrics along with Jeannine Dominy (book and verse based on her original screenplay) and Brourman (music). Dangerous Beauty is based on the 1998 movie of the same name. The show sails through the sexy, dangerous waters of Venice in the 16th century as a captivating courtesan pursues the forbidden love of a senator.

The show, in development for a decade, has had some high-profile productions, not the least of which were at Northwestern University’s American Musical Theatre Project, and earlier this year, at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Amanda McBroom 2“This show has been astoundingly difficult,” McBroom says. “Like finding a diamond needle in a haystack the size of Wisconsin. It has been continuous, from ‘yes, it should be done!’ to getting rights, to finding tasteful producers, to putting together a creative team that likes each other over a loooong period of time and won’t kill one another. Then there’s refining, refining, refining.”

The piece the team started out with 10 years ago has changed dramatically (pun intended) because the show had to evolve to match the tenor of the times without destroying the original impulse that told its creators this would be a great show.

“That was tricky,” McBroom says. “It was being able to hear someone say, ‘It needs some rock and roll’ and then take a deep breath and say, ‘Yes, let’s try it’ rather than run screaming in the other direction. Now there’s rock ‘n’ roll in it, and it’s really good. I think this show is fantastic. I remember being in back of the theater knitting during dress rehearsal. I looked up and was just astonished to see a new musical. Not Camelot, not My Fair Lady but something new. Then it occurred to me it was mine! It was a revelation. In the world, there’s a new musical. That’s an act of faith.”

McBroom says she may even sing a Dangerous Beauty song as part of Song Noir – perhaps the “song of seduction for the mother.”

As for the Brel CD, McBroom calls it a “great joy of life” and her favorite of her many CDs.

“I call it an album, which is a throwback,” McBroom says. “It’s back to the days of pouring a glass of wine, maybe rolling something, then sitting down to listen to an entire album as an evening’s event. Not just background while doing homework. Michele and I got the song list structured properly, and it’s a movie with a beginning, middle and end. You sit down, light the candles and listen. I’m so proud of that.”

Except for spending a third year of teaching a master class in Tuscany this spring, McBroom is not planning on writing another musical or recording another CD just yet.
“The universe throws things at me,” she says. “I need to find out what the next adventure is.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Amanda McBroom’s Song Noir is at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 18; Saturday, March 19; and Sunday, March 20 at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Francisco. Tickets are $35 plus a two-drink minimum. Call 800-380-3095 or visit www.therrazzroom.com for information.

The blossoming of Anika Noni Rose

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Anika Noni Rose

Watching Anika Noni Rose (seen above, photo by Andrew Macpherson) on the cabaret stage, you sense a superstar in the making.

The gorgeous Rose, all of 38, has already made a name for herself in the theater, winning the Tony Award for her performance in the Tony Kushner/Jeanine Tesori masterwork Caroline, or Change. On screen, she provided the voice of Tiana, Disney’s first African-American princess (in The Princess and the Frog) and she smooched and sang with Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce in Dreamgirls.

She has conquered stage, screen and TV (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, The Good Wife) – the cabaret stage is about the only performance arena she hasn’t yet made her own. But she’s working on it. In only her second solo cabaret act – her first in San Francisco – Rose demonstrated a sassy onstage persona, an appealing voice and a vintage collection of songs.

Part of the Bay Area Cabaret season at the Venetian Room in the Fairmont Hotel, Rose’s concert, which she had presented earlier this month at Lincoln Center as part of the American Songbook concert series, served a tribute to her late grandmother. The songs, mainly from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s, showcased Rose’s high, bright soprano and her charming, sassy way with a lyric.

Looking absolutely gorgeous in a sparkly gold dress, Rose opened the show in the audience, inviting audience members to “Come On-a My House” while pianist/music director Eugene Gwozdz provided playful accompaniment from the smalls stage.

Though she warned that she wasn’t a “patter girl,” Rose’s between-song comments were actually a highlight of the hour-long concert. She said that being in San Francisco was “like coming home” because of the time she spent here in grad school at American Conservatory Theater (indeed, Carey Perloff, ACT’s artistic director, was at a table near the stage). In describing the songs to follow, she described them as songs she grew up with because they were her grandmother’s favorites. She also took a moment to diss popular music: “I don’t know if there’s anything on the radio right now we’ll be singing in 50 years.”

Some of her show’s highlights include Eartha Kitt’s “I Want to Be Evil,” “He’s Funny That Way” (a Daniels/Whiting hit for Billie Holiday), Kansas Joe McCoy’s “Why Don’t You Do Right?” (a Peggy Lee/Benny Goodman hit) and a spirited “Relax Max,” a Dinah Washington tune that involved some slapstick from pianist Gwozdz.

Like Diana Ross, Rose has a beautiful, light tone that is brightest in the upper registers and all but disappears in the lower. Miss Rose uses her voice more effectively than Miss Ross often does, but her song choices don’t always highlight the best part of her voice. For instance, the bluesier Harold Arlen numbers “Blues in the Night” and “When the Sun Comes Out” both showed Rose’s limitations more than her strengths, though the final note of the set-ending “When the Sun Comes Out” was the evening’s most satisfying big, old Broadway belter moment.

Rose seemed to have fun in her cabaret moment, especially on numbers like “Goody Goody” and “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” (incorporating some clever flavors of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf), and though the show, as Rose promised, wasn’t heavy on emotion, she came close with an introspective “Willow Weep for Me.”

Self-deprecating and diva-ish, Rose can joke about herself and her cabaret fears (“It’s scary – it’s just me, no character”) one minute and yell at the bartenders in the back of the room the next for rattling (very loudly) their ice buckets during her numbers. She’s got a lot of star power and charisma – the next time she brings us a cabaret show, chances are pretty good it will be even better than this one.

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Upcoming for Bay Area Cabaret:

March 1, Patti LuPone in conversation with Steven Winn (presented in association with City Arts & Lectures) at the Palace of Fine Arts

March 13, John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey at the Venetian Room (5pm show sold out, tickets still available for 7:30pm)

May 1, Bay Area Teen Idol singing contest, a benefit for the San Francisco Arts Education Project at the Venetian Room

May 14, Lillias White’s tribute to Cy Coleman at the Venetian Room

Visit www.bayareacabaret.org or call City Box Office at 415-392-4400.

 

Chita’s jazz…and all that

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Chita headshot

Chita Rivera, a true Broadway legend, wowed a capacity audience at the Venetian Room as part of the Bay Area Cabaret Series. Photo by Laura Marie Duncan. Below: Rivera as Anita in West Side Story. Photo by Leo Koribbean. Bottom: Rivera with the songwriting team Kander and Ebb and Liza Minnelli. Photo by Martha Swope.

 

Last night I fell in love with a 77-year-old Broadway legend.

Actually, I started with a giant crush that developed during a recent phone interview with Chita Rivera (read the story in the San Francisco Chronicle here), and then that crush fell off the deep end when I saw her in person at the recently re-opened Venetian Room in the Fairmont Hotel as part of the Bay Area Cabaret series.

About 13 years ago, when I was the new theater guy at the Oakland Tribune/ANG Newspapers, I had the chance to interview Rivera in person at the Clift Hotel. She was launching a Broadway-bound autobiographical show called Chita & All That Jazz. On my way to the interview, I passed a flower stand, and on impulse, I bought her a gardenia. I knew that’s not what a seasoned professional would do, and my purpose wasn’t to butter her up – it was more about honoring her extraordinary career. To arrive empty handed felt like…not enough. When I sat down with her and gave her the flower, her eyes welled up, and the interview was wonderful. I got a big hug at the end, and I was happy.

Chita West Side

The problem, a few weeks later, was the show. It was like a big cruise ship entertainment with a glossy spin on Rivera’s storied career. A legend deserves better. She tried again with The Dancer’s Life, another autobiographical show scaled to Broadway size. But it didn’t do as well as people had hoped. That’s when Rivera decided to scale it down for cabaret. She started at Michael Feinstein’s club in New York and has since taken it around the country. She works with a trio (because she thinks it’s sexy to be able to say, “And now I’d like to introduce you to my trio.”) and with bigger bands and orchestras. And the one-on-one aspect of the cabaret arrangement is a wonderful way to experience the Chita magic.

At the 380-seat Venetian, with a show called Chita Rivera: My Broadway, she was incandescent. She walked on stage (from the kitchen, which is how you do it at the Venetian) in a sparkly red dress and matching jacked. With her trio behind her, she launched into a medley of “I Won’t Dance” and “Let Me Sing.” Over the course of the 90-minute show, she would actually dance – maybe not full on choreography but just enough to let us know she’s still got the sharpest, sexiest moves around – and we would have let her sing all night if she had been willing.

Rivera exudes charm but doesn’t actively try to charm. Her expertly structured and scripted show seems casual and off the cuff. She’s warm and funny and dazzling in the most appealing show-biz way. She radiates Broadway pizzazz but comes across as a grounded gal you’d love to pal around with. That’s the kind of combination that let’s you get away with anything.

Not that Rivera takes advantage. We’re in the palm of her hand, but she never coasts. She takes us through highpoints (and a few low) of her career with stops along the way for her mega hits: West Side Story’s “A Boy Like That”/”America,” Sweet Charity’s “Where Am I Going?,” Bye Bye Birdie’s “Put on a Happy Face”/ “How Lovely to Be a Woman”/ “A Lot of Living to Do” and Kiss of the Spider Woman’s “Where You Are”/ “Kiss of the Spider Woman.”

Before launching into her signature tune, “All that Jazz” from Chicago, Rivera noted that when Rita Moreno played her role of Anita in the movie version of West Side Story and Catherine Zeta Jones played Velma Kelly in the movie of Chicago, both won Oscars. Rivera, a two-time Tony Award winner, said that was OK with her. “I’d rather get there first anyhow.”

Chita Liza Kander Ebb (fix)

Paying homage to her dear friends John Kander and Fred Ebb, she sang “Love and Love Alone” from the still-gestating musical The Visit and a wistful “I Don’t Remember You” from The Happy Time and “Chief Cook and Bottle Washer” from The Rink in which she starred opposite Liza Minnelli as her daughter.

Rivera’s voice these days is husky but expressive. She swings almost as well as she moves, and her rapport with the adoring audience is cabaret ecstasy.

Reminiscing about her experiences in San Francisco, Rivera said she first visited the city at age 17 when she was in a tour of Call Me Madam starring Elaine Stritch. She’s been back many times and still loves the city even though her tour of Kiss of the Spider Woman wasn’t the hit here that she had imagined. She came here as a well-trained musical theater neophyte and this weekend returned as theater royalty. She made a cabaret room feel like a Broadway stage and we were all up there with her doing high kicks in the spotlight.

That’s a great feeling, and it’s only something you can experience when a performer as talented and generous as Rivera opens her heart and lets you in.

Here’s a treat – Rivera singing Kander and Ebb’s “Love and Love Alone” from The Visit:

 

Visit Chita Rivera’s official website here.

The Venetian Room and the way we were

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Venetian Room

The Venetian Room as it appears today. Below, the Venetian Room in the 1950s and opening-night headliner Marvin Hamlisch.

Sometimes I feel like I got to San Francisco just a little bit too late.

By the time I got here in 1990, the cabaret heyday was long past, and just a year before, the famed Venetian Room in the Fairmont Hotel – where Ella Fitzgerald and Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr. had all performed and where, in 1962, Tony Bennett introduced a little tune called “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” – shut its doors as a musical venue after more than four decades and became just another overly ornate meeting room.

Tonight, I’m happy to report, the Venetian Room reopened as the new home of Bay Area Cabaret, Marilyn Levinson’s seven-year-old nonprofit fighting to keep classy cabaret alive in San Francisco.

Levinson called the re-launched Venetian room a “secret dream,” one that has now been not-so-secretly realized.

Though the cigarette girls are no longer roaming the room, the glamour quotient for the Bay Area cabaret scene has risen a few notches. At Sunday’s opening-night gala, there were indeed ladies in furs and that classic cabaret mystique – part sophistication, part see and be seen, part icy martini – was back in play. It’s hard not to get caught up in the swirl of excitement when you walk through the lobby of the Fairmont to get to the Venetian Room – it’s so opulent, and not in that faux Las Vegas wannabe way. This is the real thing.

Venetian Room 2

If the lighting and sound in the room aren’t perfect, and if the tables are wobbly and the chairs crammed too close together, it was hard to mind. Levinson’s joy at the room’s re-opening, echoed by Tom Klein, the Fairmont’s general manager, was contagious.

The opening-night entertainment fell to Marvin Hamlisch, an unlikely superstar. But how else to describe the man who shared a Pulitzer for his first Broadway show (A Chorus Line) after he’d already racked up three Oscars for his work on the movies The Way We Were and The Sting. He has Tonys, Emmys and Grammys as well, putting him in that elite, multi-award-winner circle that will forever attach awards to his name.

Hamlisch has quite a polished act. He tickles the ivories to be sure, but he’s a heck of a comedian. Noting that performers really do have to walk through the kitchen to get to the stage, he said, “The cantaloupe looked good.” Hamlisch is also a generous composer who happily shares the stage and his piano playing with Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers. Though he’s won just about every award imaginable, he shared a medley of Academy Award losers that included “The Look of Love,” “Cheek to Cheek” and “Nobody Does It Better.”

Marvin Hamlisch

For a medley of songs by Richard Rodgers (his mother’s favorite composer – don’t ask), he was joined by Les Miserables journeyman J. Mark McVey, whose gorgeous baritone was especially well utilized on “It Might As Well Be Spring” and “Some Enchanted Evening.” McVey also deigned to do one of his own standards, “Bring Him Home,” which he described as the “prayer from the second-act barricade.”

After saying he likes to write to titles, Hamlisch entertained audience title suggestions then proceeded to compose a song to match. The evening’s newly minted song was “Letting Go the List,” which also worked in a rejected audience offering, “Oh No You Didn’t!”

Maria Friedman, the special guest for the evening, had just flown in from London, where she is in rehearsals for The Invisible Man, a new musical based on the H.G. Wells tale. The winner of three Olivier Awards and considered an eminent Sondheim interpreter, Friedman punched through “Being Alive,” “Broadway Baby” and “Send in the Clowns.” She’s lovely, but I was underwhelmed. When Friedman returned later in the show to sing “The Way We Were,” she started off with the wrong lyrics and asked to start over. Let’s credit that to jet lag and move on.

Hamlisch trotted out a trio of songs he wished he’d written – “Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewidlered” and “Somewhere” – and then launched into three songs of his own, “three songs only four people know,” which was a bit of an exaggeration. “Falling” from They’re Playing Our Song, “The Last Time I Felt Like This,” the Oscar-nominated theme from Same Time Next Year and “If You Remember Me” (lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager) are not exactly obscure, but it’s always good to hear them.

The evening ended, somewhat ironically, with an overture – the never-used A Chorus Line overture, but before that, Hamlisch had an observation. “This room has a great vibe,” Hamlisch said, surveying the jam-packed Venetian. “It has always been a great room.”

And it looks as though it will continue to be. Sometimes, when you’re lucky, it feels like you’re in San Francisco at exactly the right time.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

The Bay Area Cabaret season includes Chita Rivera’s My Broadway Nov. 5; Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp’s Adam & Anthony Live: the Guys from Rent Nov. 21; John Pizzarelli and Jessica Molaskey in The Carlyle Show March 13; Anika Noni Rose in concert May 1; and Lilias White in a Cy Coleman tribute called My Guy Cy May 14. Tickets range from $35 to $60 with discounts (and reserved seats) for subscribers. Call 415 392-4400 or visit www.bayareacabaret.org for information.

Sam Harris aims for Jolson & ‘Reclamation’

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First, two issues that need addressing:
– Why isn’t Sam Harris performing his new gay marriage anthem “My Reclamation” at San Francisco’s Gay Pride celebration? It’s a beautiful, moving ode to love and equal rights — part defiant manifesto, part gorgeous ballad. So far, Harris is not slated to appear on any Gay Pride stage, and that seems, to say the least, like a missed opportunity.
Sam Harris1 – Why isn’t “Glee”mastermind Ryan Murphy begging Sam Harris to play one of Rachel’s (Lea Michelle) two dads? It’s such a brilliant no brainer. Can you just imagine the Harris/Michelle power duets? A show queen’s mind fairly boggles.

We’re thinking about Sam Harris because the big-voiced, Tony-nominated performer is headed back to San Francisco’s Rrazz Room, where he triumphed in a last-minute, late-night about a year ago. It just so happens that Harris’ gig coincides with all the Gay Pride revelry, which can hardly be accidental. In addition to his new song, Harris’ life is practically a paean to the fully integrated, 21st century gay life. He and his husband, Danny, are busy raising their 2-year-old son, Cooper, who after a recent trip to the theater (the child’s first) to see Sesame Street Live, told his dads, “Cooper up there, sing, dance with Cookie Monster.” You could hardly expect less from the spawn of Harris.

“We don’t watch much TV in our house, but I do go to YouTube and show him things like Donald O’Connor doing `Make ’em Laugh,'” Harris says on the phone from his Los Angeles home. “My favorite words from his mouth are, `More Gene Kelly! More Gene Kelly!’ The fact that he’s been backstage when I’m performing or on stage during sound checks — he’s been exposed to show biz. I mean come on, Liza Minnelli (Harris’ good friend) is in his life. It’s inevitable he’s going to be drawn to this environment. But we’re not enrolling him in tap class just yet. He’s into garbage trucks, Elmo, Cookie Monster and playing with balls. He’s a little scrapper.”

The 49-year-old Harris could be a described as a scrapper himself. Ever since winning that first big singing contest (on a little pre-“American Idol” show we used to call “Star Search”), Harris has made a living being an old-fashioned entertainer in a new-fangled world. He’s done albums, Broadway, TV sitcoms and the concert circuit. He’s frank and funny, and full of energy — that much you can see on his regular YouTube posts. Then there’s that voice, a Streisand-esque marvel that soars to unbelievable heights even as it plumbs emotional depths.

Sam Harris2In addition to promoting his “My Reclamation” single, Harris is working on a couple of projects. The big one is something he started working on years ago: a stage biography of Al Jolson, a heart-on-his-sleeve, voices-in-the-rafters entertainer who shares entertainer DNA with Harris.

“This show is meaty and dark and gritty and fat and complicated and really the best part for a man ever, ever, ever,” Harris explains. “It’s about somebody whose first love was the stage. It deals with his relationship with his father and with Ruby Keeler. It’s the inside of this darkly megalomaniacal man who was like a child, kind of a schmuck and then very kind at other times.”

Harris, obviously enamored of the part, goes so far as to call it “the Mama Rose of men’s roles.” The musical, which has been called Let Me Sing and Jolie features a book by Sherman Yellen and music and lyrics by Will Holt (the show also incorporates Jolson’s biggest songs and standards of the day).

“It’s interesting because I did an incarnation of this 10 years ago, and it almost went to Broadway,” Harris recalls. “We had costume fittings and had an out-of-town theater in Boston, but the financing dropped out in an afternoon. But I realized recently that at this time in my life, I’m so much more ready and prepared and right for it than I would have been then. It’s my goal to look at everything that way: work hard toward a goal and go where the universe takes you. I think that now the show’s chances for success are much greater.”

The other project is still a hush-hush TV project. “It’s getting a lot of heat,” Harris says. “I’ll hopefully be able to talk about it soon. It not only satisfies me creatively but also satisfies the obligation to my philosophy, which is about paying it forward.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Sam Harris in concert, June 23-27 at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Francisco. Call 866 468-3399 or visit www.therrazzroom.com.

Cabaret classic: A valentine to Paula West

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Paula West is going to do things to you in the dark, and you’re going to like it.

Now that she can actually be considered a veteran of the San Francisco cabaret scene, West is letting loose in her new show at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko, and man does it feel good.

Backed by the George Mesterhazy Quartet, a jaunty West takes the stage and in short order she struts, she makes friends, and she romances in the dark. In her opening number, she funkifies “Dark Town Strutter’s Ball” to the point that a truly golden oldie sounds like the hippest thing going. Then she bends Bob Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do” into a fetching reggae pulse (and even makes it sound a little Cole Porter-ish). It turns out those turns are merely a warmup for the near-nuclear explosion of “Romance in the Dark,” a 1940s tease made famous by Lil Green.

Bold and sexy, “Romance in the Dark” gives West the perfect opportunity to show off just why she’s so incredibly good. The song caresses and punches. It slaps and tickles, if you will. And West imbues the song with warmth that turns into heat and sass that turns into sensuality.
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After that opening trio, can I just say that the Great Recession is officially over, and Paula West is the first step toward recovery – at least toward recovering a glimmer of unadulterated joy in these dark winter months. After the momentum of “Darktown Strutter’s” and Dylan followed by the climax of “Romance,” there’s no way West can follow up with anything but Cole Porter. “Nobody’s Chasing Me,” with its lounge-y melody and clever lyrics, serves as a between-courses palate cleanser, and the rest of the show is a nutritious feast.

West is pulling tunes from all over the place – New Orleans for “Iko Iko,” Tin Pan Alley for Hoagy Carmichael’s delicious “Bread and Gravy, mid-’60s Dylan again with a fantastic “Maggie’s Farm” – and she delivers them all with shifting colors and a voice as supple as it is strong.

For the evening’s wrenching ballad, she soars through “Where Flamingos Fly,” an obscure tune recorded by Peggy Lee and Helen Merrill that involves a criminal lover making a quick getaway. And she winds down with a swingin’ “Have You Met Sir Jones,” “My Romance” and “The Music Goes Round and Round.” To wrap up this close-to-perfect cabaret evening, she hauls out her big belt notes to wail on Porter’s “I’m in Love Again.” West’s exuberance is barely contained, and her opening-night audience felt exactly the same way. They demanded a second encore, and West obliged, offering “The Snake,” her ssssssinfully biting signature tune.

Paula West just gets better and better. She has exited the realm of wonderful cabaret singers and entered the pantheon of greatness. She’s at the Rrazz Room for the next month and a half. Treat yourself and see her – at least once. They just don’t make ’em like this anymore.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

Paula West continues at the Rrazz Room through March 14. Tickets are $35-$45 plus a two-drink minimum. The Hotel Nikko is at 222 Mason St. Visit www.therrazzroom.com for information.

Now here’s a treat. Paula sings “Like a Rolling Stone” with the George Mesterhazy Quartet.

Ballet and belts: Smuin Ballet and Sam Harris

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It was a perfect Friday-night cultural double feature: opening night of Smuin Ballet’s spring season at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and then a quick dash to the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko for Sam Harris’ late night cabaret gig.

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I’m no dance critic, so I won’t even try to analyze the three pieces of Smuin’s highly enjoyable spring season, but I will share what I loved. I fully expected to enjoy St. Louis Woman: A Blues Ballet, the last narrative ballet Michael Smuin completed before his death two years ago. Originally conceived for the Dance Theatre of Harlem, this dance version of the 1946 Broadway musical by Harold Arlen (music), Johnny Mercer (lyrics) and writers Arna Bontemps and Countee Cullen was part of Berkeley’s Cal Performances season in 2004.

This version uses the same Tony Walton set and Willa Kim costumes (both hot and gorgeous) but seemed shorter. It uses a recorded soundtrack of Arlen’s irresistible music and the great Arlen-Mercer songs such as “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home,” “Cakewalk Your Lady,” “Ridin’ on the Moon” and “It’s a Woman’s Prerogative.”

I have to admit it’s a little weird to see a story that’s supposed to be performed by an all African-American cast inhabited by a predominantly white cast. But the dancing is flashy and fun, full of Broadway pizzazz and flash.

The real stand-out of the night for me is the second piece, Bouquet, which Smuin choreographed to the music of Shostakovich. Romantic and achingly beautiful, the piece begins with a pas de quatre (Erin Yarbrough-Stewart, Darren Anderson, Ryan Camou and Shannon Hurlburt) and ends with a pas de deux by Brooke Reynolds and Aaron Thayer that is an exquisite expression of love through dance.

For information about the Smuin season tour, visit www.smuinballet.org.

It’s a shame that Sam Harris is only in town for two late shows (his second is tonight, Saturday, May 9) at the Rrazz Room. He deserves a much longer run, but he’s got a year-old baby and a busy career developing sitcoms and getting ready to star in a Broadway-bound musical (The First Wives Club). We’ll take what we can get.

Harris is as much a comedian as he is a singer. He compared the Rrazz Room to his own living room and said of his boyfriend (now husband) of 14 years, Danny Jacobsen, that they have been five of the best years of his life, not consecutive. “When we got married I didn’t know what true love was. And now it’s too late.” Bad dum bum.

Even though the late show was “so past my bedtime – I’m serious” Harris and his extraordinary pianist/musical director Todd Schroeder put on a remarkably good and varied show, which opened with U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for,” given the full gospel treatment, merged with Stephen Sondheim’s “I’m Still Here” re-written with lyric references to Harris’ career, his sobriety, his family, etc. It might be noted that Cher opened her interminable farewell tour with “I Still Haven’t Found…” but that didn’t even seem like the same song Harris sang.

With his big voice, crazy range and complete comfort on stage, Harris was a delight from beginning to end, whether he was chiding Rrazz management for not providing him with a towel (he borrowed one from a gentleman in the front row who just happened to have his gym bag – ah, San Francisco!) or forgetting the lyrics to his intensely emotional version of “I Can’t Make You Love Me.”

Song choices were all over the place, from Harold Arlen’s 1930s ode to ganja in “The Wail of the Reefer Man” to the James Taylor-Carly Simon version of “Mockingbird” song full throttle with Schroeder to a moving version of Maury Yeston’s tender “New Words.” Harris was practically a one-man Broadway show on the amped-up “Ain’t We Got Fun,” an aggressively cynical take on the Depression-happy tune, which Schroeder pounded through with bravura ferocity.

A gimmick purporting to take audience suggestions for show tunes resulted in an aborted “Ease on Down the Road” and a full-throttle “Don’t Rain on My Parade” and a jazzy “My Favorite Things.”

Harris pulled out all the vocal/emotional stops on “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and “Over the Rainbow” before closing the show with a gentle “In My Life.”

It seemed we were just getting going when the show was over, leaving us wanting more, which is always a good thing.

Keep up with Harris, his calendar, his projects and his video blogs at www.samharris.com.

 

 

Cabaret review: Ben Vereen

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Legendary performer Ben Vereen sang standards and songs from Broadway in his Rrazz Room show. Photos by Isak Tiner

 

Kick, kick, turn and SING! Ben Vereen does the cabaret thing
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Toward the end of his exhilarating show at San Francisco’s gorgeous Rrazz Room, Ben Vereen was musing on the state of the world and trying to find something positive to say. He concluded that it’s not so much about our leaders but about us living good lives and taking care of each other.

“But what do I know?” he said. “I’m just some legendary star.”

Then he let loose with one of those chuckles, grinned that high-wattage Vereen grin and sang “If I Ruled the World.”

Vereen was making fun of himself…sort of. He is a legend and he knows it. He won a Tony Award in Pippin, and he’s been in shows ranging from Sweet Charity to Golden Boy to Grind to Wicked. He starred as “Chicken” George in the landmark TV series Roots, and he’s made memorable screen appearances in All That Jazz and Idlewild.

At 62, after some rocky patches involving a car accident and health problems, Vereen is back on stage and in fine form.

He’s currently touring with a tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. that requires an 18-piece orchestra, but he scaled things down for the Rrazz Room with his pianist/musical director Nelson Cole, bassist Tom Kennedy and drummer Marc Dicianni. But the thing about Vereen is that he’s a large-scale performer and brings theater-size pizzazz with him wherever he goes.

This was evident early in his 90-minute set with a medley of songs from Broadway shows he’s been in: “Corner of the Sky” from Pippin, “Aquarius” from Hair and “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” and the title song from Jesus Christ Superstar. He even tackled “Memory” from Cats and gave it the full-on dramatic treatment then left us with a religious spin: in the last notes as the new day was dawning, he looked up and said, “Thank you, Father, thank you.”

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Decked out in a black suit with red flourishes – a silky red scarf, a red stripe down the black tie, a flash of red around the black shirt collar – Vereen looks great and sounds good. He talked about his fond memories of San Francisco doing No Place to Be Somebody at the Off Broadway Theatre and going tribal in Hair at the Orpheum.

During his tribute to Frank Sinatra (which includes a “My Way” that Vereen somehow gets away with), Vereen sang “It Was a Very Good Year” and couldn’t resist the urge to dance. But looking at the rather confined space on stage, he said: “They said there would be room to dance” and chuckled. But he managed to move. And later in the show, during the Davis tribute’s rendition of “Hey There” from The Pajama Game, Vereen danced his way through the audience.

That Davis tribute really is the centerpiece of Vereen’s show, and it’s fantastic. Vereen and Davis worked together in Golden Boy, and it’s clear Vereen has great affection and admiration for Davis during such numbers as “Once in a Lifetime,” “A Lot of Livin’ to Do” and a reconfigured “Mr. Bojangles,” complete with black bowler hat, that refers directly to Davis.

Vereen’s duets with the individual members of his band were stellar. With Dicianni using his hands instead of sticks on his drum kit, he and Vereen performed a thrilling “Misty”; with Kennedy doing extraordinary things to his upright bass, Vereen gave “My Funny Valentine” new life; and with Kennedy’s sumptuous melodic support on piano, he sang “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” that managed to be funny and affecting.

Like the seasoned performer he is, Vereen can make a cabaret feel like an intimate exchange or the Act 1 finale of a Broadway show. He’s charming, funny and intense, and he makes a strong connection with his audience. But then again, what does he know? He’s just some legendary star.

MORE VEREEN:

Ben Vereen will sing the national anthem at the Oakland As baseball game against the Texas Rangers on Thursday, May 7th.  Also on that day, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has also declared Thursday, May 7th, “Take the Stage for Diabetes Awareness Day” in San Francisco and awarded Vereen a mayoral proclamation.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Ben Vereen performs through May 10 at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko, 222 Mason St., San Francisco. Shows are at 8 p.m. except for a special Mother’s Day show at 7 p.m. on Sunday, May 10. Tickets are $45-$50 plus a two-drink minimum. Call 866-468-3399 or visit www.therrazzroom.com for information.

Here’s an excerpt of Vereen performing “Magic to Do” and doing the Bob Fosse thing in Pippin (circa 1981):