Café Carlyle NYC Presents John O’Hurley - New York City Article

Café Carlyle in New York City Presents John O’Hurley, “A Man with Standards” 

Through Saturday, April 8

Actor-singer John O’Hurley is best known to multiple generations of TV viewers as “J. Peterman” on “Seinfeld.” But whereas that character, on the most popular sitcom of our time, is terminally earnest, the real life O’Hurley has something more of an ironic edge to his personality. He tells us early in the show that he first came to prominence as a soap opera star, but his overall demeanor is more like a musical comedy leading man, with chiseled good looks and a deep resonant baritone. The centerpiece of the show is a pair of excellent, less-frequently performed anthems composed for Frank Sinatra by Joe Raposo, “There Used to be a Ballpark” and “You Will Be My Music,” which bookend a tale of meeting The Chairman at a golf tournament in the mid-1970s. But along the way, he also resurrects “Once Upon a Time,” an overlooked Anthony Newley tour-de-force, and delivers a warm and winning interpretation of one of the ultimate “Old Stud” songs, “MacArthur Park.” The show builds up to the two iconic show tunes he sang on Broadway as Billy Flynn in “Chicago,” “All I Care About” and “Razzle Dazzle,” which prove to be perfect vehicles for the O’Hurley / Peterman character, at once a song-and-dance man and a flim-flam con artist. The major difference is that here, in his Carlyle debut, he lets his audiences know that he’s in on the joke.

Click Here to Purchase Tickets for John O'Hurley, "A Many with Standards," at Cafe Carlyle.