Will's New York Nite Life

In his summer offering at the club that bears his name, Michael Feinstein has built his own solo show around the notion of Broadway showstoppers. In doing so, however, he proves that it doesn’t necessarily take a loud and brassy eleven o’clock production number with 5,000 dancers to stop a show - often the desired effect can be achieved with a song that’s intimate and personal, like “Losing My Mind” (from Sondheim’s Follies), which he delivers in an especially moving solo reading, accompanied only by his own piano. (Otherwise, the ace rhythm section of Tedd Firth, musical director and piano, Phil Palumbo, bass, and Mark McLean, drums, is on hand.) Sometimes a show can also be stopped with a comedy number that’s almost an olympic feat of tongue twisting and timing, as Mr. Feinstein shows with Ira Gershwin’s “Tchaikovsky” and all five choruses of Cole Porter’s “Can Can.” But in general, the most moving showstoppers are the most intensely emotional moments, as on Billy Goldenberg’s “Fifty Percent,” and, in a very different way on Mr. Feinstein’s very touching solo tribute to the late Barbara Cook on “Goodnight My Someone.” There are enough showstoppers in this 70-minute show to last an entire season on Broadway.

In 1948, Kiss Me Kate was welcomed as a return to form for the genius that was Cole Porter. The great songwriter had not enjoyed a major hit on Broadway for nearly a decade, and, on top of which, he now had to contend with the spanking-new form of book-driven integrated musical theater pioneered by Rodgers & Hammerstein. Inspired by Shakespeare’s sexiest comedy, The Taming of the Shrew, and an brilliant book by Broadway veterans Samuel and Bella Spewack, Porter came up with his most durable and most frequently-revived show, winning the first-ever Tony award in the process. Porter’s words and music ingeniously tell two stories at once, a backstage tale of egocentric actors and divas interacting with gangsters and gamblers as they attempt to stage an all-singing, all-dancing version of Shakespeare’s classic comedy of 1592. This al fresco concert production takes the Bard’s notion of a “troop of strolling players” very literally, offering just the essentials, starting with a magnificent pair of leads, Melissa Errico and Metropolitan Opera baritone Richard Troxell, who were so effective in the Encores! production of Do I Hear a Waltz, heading a cast of 14. Even if you don’t live in Long Island, it would be well worth riding the Hamptons Jitney to the ends of the earth down Highway 27 to hear Ms. Errico’s lilting soprano on “So In Love” and Mr. Troxell tell us of the “The Life that Late I Led.” Wunderbar!

What most people know about Angela Jennifer (aka “A. J.”) Lambert is her royal lineage: her parents were pop icon Nancy Sinatra and celebrated choreographer Hugh Lambert, and her grandfather was the legendary Frank Sinatra. What you might not know is that this esteemed representative of the Third Generation of the Sinatra Dynasty is an accomplished singer-songwriter and a veteran performer as well. For her Feinstein’s debut, Ms. Lambert will take us through all sixteen songs in what just might be Sinatra Senior’s most significant work, the 1955 In the Wee Small Hours, which is also a mighty contender for the greatest jazz-pop-standards album ever made by anyone. As shown in a recent youTube video of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” (click here), Ms. Lambert has her own take on the material while also incorporating her grandfather’s classic interpretation. Worth seeing, says I.

In Hello, Dolly, which has taken New York by storm all over again 50 years after the original production, leading man Horace Vandergelder is described as “half a millionaire.” Songwriter and Broadway guru Jerry Herman has made considerably more than half a million dollars from his many hits. But in spite of his overwhelming commercial success, he’s never gotten quite the intellectual acclaim he deserves - which can only be because his shows are fun and upbeat musical comedies, rather than dark brooding musical dramas like those of his contemporary, Stephen Sondheim. But, don’t mistake comedy for dispensable frivolity - Mr. Herman’s words and music are just as substantial as those of anyone who has ever written for the modern musical theater, from Rodgers & Hammerstein on sideways. Jerry Herman is perhaps best known as a composer of material for name-above-the-title Broadway divas, so it makes sense that the best known retrospective of his work should be geared for three first rate female performers: Stephanie D’Abruzzo, Stephanie Umoh, and our favorite singer-comedienne-impressionist, Christine Pedi. First produced in 1981 (and now expanded to include songs from later shows), this two act revue features the highlights from over the whole course of his remarkable, six-decade career, including the expected blockbusters, Dolly, Mame, La Cage Aux Folles and such lesser-known but eminently worthy works such as Milk and Honey, Dear World, Mack and Mabel, and The Grand Tour. If there’s any one production that can best substantiate Mr. Herman’s claim, in one of his lyrics, that “there’s no tune like a show tune in 2/4,” this is it.

Cole Porter on the East Side