Photo Credit: Genevieve Rafter Keddy

 

                                             by Julia Polinsky

 

For sixteen years, Scott Siegel has created, written, directed, and produced Broadway By The Year at The Town Hall. Decade by decade, year by year, songs from Broadway shows get special treatment by superb singers and the best “little big band” ever. The most recent, on March 28, was all about the 1950s, a decade that was so rich in great musicals, it must have been hard to choose. Siegel and his performers did a simply wonderful job.

 

First things first: the Ross Patterson Little Big Band may be the finest small group ever to accompany singers. Ross Patterson, piano; Tom Hubbard, bass, and Jared Schonig, drums: they played so well, did so many things right. Yeah, yeah, the basics were all there, but the artistry? The care and consideration for the singers? These musicians were partners, not just backup. The Best.

 

The musicals of that decade, among others: Silk Stockings. The King and I. The Music Man. Can-Can. Damn Yankees. Peter Pan. My Fair Lady. West Side Story. Once Upon a Mattress, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Paint Your Wagon. Kismet, Gypsy, Flower Drum Song, Sound of Music.  How can you go wrong?

 

The library of well-known, delicious songs from these shows reads like a roster of “can you top this?” “Hello, Young Lovers.” “Too Close for Comfort.” “C’est Magnifique." “Heart.” “On The Street Where You Live.” “Stranger in Paradise,” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” and on and on. Great material for great singers, and that's how the evening rolled.

 

Less well-known musicals also got their due, and the audience learned the provenance of great songs that came from nowhere, it seems.  Who knew "They Call The Wind Maria" was not a folk song, but from a Broadway show (Paint Your Wagon)?  And really, who remembers The Golden Apple? Yet, that musical produced the marvelous "Lazy Afternoon." Douglas Ladnier sang both of these songs, the second in a performance so good, the audience was completely silent, enchanted.

 

 

When an evening leads off with with Marilyn Maye singing Cole Porter’s “All of You,” you know you’re in for a ride. So accomplished, so alive, you forget that she’s been out there singing for quite some time. Her other numbers let her show off her consummate professionalism and artistry, and look like she was just plain having fun. In "Too Close for Comfort," she shared the stage with tap dancer Jimmy James Sutherland. And her "Everything's Coming Up Roses": well. Just, well. She showed everyone how it’s done, how you take a lump and come back roaring.

 

It doesn’t really get better than that – except, it did.  The timelessly elegant Karen Akers sang four numbers; of them, the last, “Love, Look Away,” beautifully accompanied on guitar by Sean Harkness, really gave her the chance to shine.

 

Jim Brochu did an engaging “Trouble,” from The Music Man, and got the audience, happily, to help him. He was also the nexus of “Heart,” the famously charming ensemble piece from Damn Yankees.

 

 Josh Grisetti sang the lesser-known “Very Soft Shoes” from Once Upon A Mattress, accompanied by the energetic tap dancing of Luke Hawkins. (Yes, tap to a soft-shoe number. Go figure.) Grisetti also opened the second half of the show with a lovely “On The Street Where You Live." It was surprising that he breathed in the middle of his phrases, an epidemic problem among so-so singers, and therefore unexpected in a performer who’s garnered such great reviews and so many awards and nominations.

 

 Jill Paice, currently on Broadway in An American in Paris, sweetly sang two songs well suited to her ("Till There Was You" and "Make the Man Love Me"). She was also featured in a duet with Douglas Ladnier, singing the difficult and beautiful “One Hand, One Heart,” from West Side Story,

 

 and as The Girl, in "All I Need Is the Girl" (Gypsy). In that song, both tap dancers, Luke Hawkins and Jimmy James Sutherland, danced a mighty duel with Paice between them. Not a note was sung, but the number really worked.

 

In contrast to her lovely, soft performance of “Never Never Land,” when Lisa Howard sang “Climb Every Mountain” to end the evening, that magnificent voice filled the hall to the rafters, becoming a personal power anthem.

 

Grisetti, Howard, and Paice sing like they were trained for classical careers, but they're now on Broadway. They sing well; they sell a song; but they maintain a little distance. They are not, in short, cabaret singers, and they got schooled by the accomplished, experienced, consummately professional cabaret and Broadway artists, Akers, Brochu, Ladiner and Maye.

 

Schooled? In what? Grisetti and Howard are award winners, on and off Broadway, in regional theater, in touring companies; Paice has starred or been featured on Broadway and in the West End. In what can they possibly need schooling?

 

In intimacy. In reaching out to an audience and drawing it in. The singers with rich cabaret experience can enchant each listener, so he feels as if the song was sung just for him, or she knows the singer added extra emotion just to reach her.

 

There’s no hiding place in cabaret, but theater creates distance between actor and audience. You can conceal a lot in theater – it’s part of the mystique of being an actor: putting on a persona, and maintaining it during the show. Becoming one with the song, and giving yourself to the audience, with it? That’s cabaret. In Broadway By The Year, the performers with lots of cabaret experience made their songs alive. The audience felt every emotion, and the evening was the better for it.

 

Kudos to Scott Siegel for structuring this show so well. His polished and entertaining narration, between songs, gave a short, welcome course in Broadway tidbits. The Broadway By The Year series makes for a splendid evening of Broadway music. Mark your calendar for these upcoming Broadway By The Year evenings:

 

Broadway Musicals of the 1960s, Monday May 23, 2016, 8 pm

Featuring songs by Jerry Herman, Kander and Ebb, Bock and Harnick, and more

Broadway Musicals of the 1970s, Monday, June 20, 8pm

Featuring songs by Stephen Sondheim, Marvin Hamlisch and Cy Coleman, and more

 

The Town Hall

123 W. 43rd St

New York, NY

 

Tickets: $50-60

Box office: 212-840-2824

Mon-Sat, noon-6pm

Ticketmaster 800-982-2787

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