LuPone-a-palooza!
Need your Patti LuPone fix? You've come to the right place.
We have for you an interview with Ms. LuPone in connection with the San Francisco debut of her latest cabaret show, Far Away Places, at the newly configured Live at the Rrazz performance space in the Cadillac Building. We also have a review (spoiler alert: it's a rave) of that show.
Ah, Men! Betty Buckley tackles the boys of Broadway
In 1985, Betty Buckley was sensational as a boy in the Rupert Holmes musical The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which happens to be back on Broadway at the moment in an all-new production). She was playing Alice Nutting, a famous male impersonator, and the trousers role fulfilled a long-held fantasy of being a boy on Broadway (as a kid growing up in Texas she longed to be a Jet in West Side Story).
Well the 65-year-old Buckley is getting back to the boys in her new cabaret show and CD, Ah, Men! The Boys of Broadway in which she sings more than a dozen songs originally sung by male characters in shows. San Francisco audiences will experience the boyish side of Buckley when she brings Ah, Men! to the Rrazz Room this week (Oct. 30-Nov. 4).
Mark Nadler is crazy for 1961
Cabaret dazzler Mark Nadler is on the road both literally and figuratively. In the figurative sense, Nadler is on the road to the past in his new show. That shouldn't be a surprise for a piano-playing, singing raconteur like Nadler who mines the Great American Songbook for all it's worth. What is surprising is that Nadler is not heading back quite as far this time. He's heading to 1961, his birth year, in Crazy 1961, which bows at San Francisco's Rrazz Room on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1.
In the words of a song written in 1961, it was a very good year.
Terri White's Great White Way (and a perfect martini!)
Palo Alto native Terri White grew up and became a Broadway star, thanks largely to her big break in 1972's musical hit Two Gentlemen of Verona, which she also performed on tour at the Geary Theater. There have been dramatic ups and downs in White's career – it is a theater career, after all – but her journey has brought her back to the Bay Area several times, including a double stint in 1994 at the then-named Theatre on the Square in Make Someone Happy composer Jule Styne's last hurrah (White remembers it more as Make Someone Run because it wasn't Styne's best work; he died several weeks after the show), followed by Nunsense 2.
But White's most memorable San Francisco stage experience, at least until she makes her cabaret debut July 10 at the Rrazz Room was in the Cy Coleman musical Barnum in which she originated the role of Joice Heth (singing the memorable song "Thank God I'm Old").
Ben Vereen and a sweet, happy life
When you call Ben Vereen's mobile phone, you get a most entertaining voicemail message. It's Chita Rivera singing, "My wish for you is a sweet, happy life." Then a cheerful Vereen says that's his wish for you as well. It's such an uplifting message that by the time you hear the beep, you realize you don't really miss talking to the man himself.
But then you get the man himself, and he proves to be even more cheerful than that message. At 65, and after a car accident in 1992 that would have sidelined just about anyone else, Vereen is a man on the move, a man with a plan. He's bringing his show Steppin' Out with Ben Vereen to the Rrazz Room June 12-17. Next month he'll play the newly opened 54 Below, the cabaret underneath the former nightclub (now legit Broadway theater) Studio 54. Then he goes to Australia, and after that, it's Broadway, baby. At least that's the plan. Vereen is hard at work on the show he's call in The Last of the Showmen, and that's really what he is.
Faith Prince & Jason Graae: a perfectly delightful duet
He says he’s been a fan of hers since he was a child. She says he makes her pee.
Quips fly fast and furious when talking to Jason Graae and Faith Prince, especially when they’re talking about each other. Graae and Prince are the latest double act on the circuit, and it’s about time. Seriously. These two have known and loved each other for years, ever since they met in college at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.
Now bosom buddies Prince and Graae and hitting the road together in The Prince and the Showboy (and there’s a long subtitle with their names and awards attached, see the info box below), coming to the Rrrazz Room this weekend (March 25-27) for three performances only.
Todd Murray’s voice: delicious as warm bread
Not many people can claim success in the fields of musical theater, bread baking and crooning. Todd Murray can.
Growing up in a small Pennsylvania farming community, Murray had two loves. One was music. The other was food. In the pre-Internet, pre-cable TV days, Murray figured it would be impossible to break into the entertainment industry and maybe not as difficult to break into the food biz. Up until his senior year of high school, he had his sites set on chef school.
But then in college, he started gravitating toward performing and started getting jobs in Opryland USA, Tokyo Disneyland and summer stock in his home state.
Jason Graae: the funniest best singer you’re likely to see
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.
Swept up in the Noir world of Amanda McBroom
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.
Bergen goes from Jersey boy to bawdy balladeer
Erich Bergen became a man in San Francisco. OK, that’s an exaggeration, but when the performer was cast as Bob Gaudio in the touring production of Jersey Boys, he was all of 20 years old. The tour ended up sitting down at the Curran Theatre for nine months in 2007, and Bergen, a native of New York City, celebrated his 21st birthday in the City by the Bay.
He’ll be back in San Francisco for an all-too-brief one-night stand at the Rrazz Room in the Hotel Nikko on Monday, Feb. 7. His show is affectionately subtitled: “An evening of music, inappropriate laughs and awkward pauses.”
“That city holds a lot of crazy memories,” Bergen says on the phone from Los Angeles, his home since late 2009. “When I was cast, I had never really done New York as an adult actor. I quit college – or ‘left the company’ as I like to say – and was sent out on the road into that crazy Jersey Boys land. Suddenly it was this world you dream of with fans outside the stage door. Then while I was here I was in a relationship and all these first-time grown-up things were happening.”
Sam Harris aims for Jolson & 'Reclamation'
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.- 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.