Feinstein and Mae.

A badly needed four-week vacation followed by a busy week seeing five films a day at the Toronto International Film Festival has left me way behind in telling you about Michael Feinstein and Marilyn Maye’s tuneful contribution to the final season at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency. If you haven’t joined the party yet, there’s one more week to go. What are you waiting for?

Duo acts rarely work in clubs, which is why there are so few of them. Solo artists have their own agendas, which often get in the way of sharing. Few can be considered team players. Voices don’t often blend, material is at loggerheads, and love—as in tennis—means no points scored. You won’t find any Jackie and Roys, no Steve and Eydie. So all hail this amazing pair whose far-flung ages might be generations apart (singing kid and hip grandma?) but whose keen chops and communal passion for tasty songs are without boundaries. They call their show “Swingin’ The Night Away,” but if there’s a theme, who cares? One constant caveat I have about Feinstein’s is the sound. No matter what kind of money they spend on sound equipment, the place has never found an acceptable stereo balance, and to quote a favorite composition by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, it’s too late now. When the mike shrieked with feedback, Michael said “We have Michael Buble on sound.” The man always thinks on his feet. He also takes requests, and unlike inferior poseurs who have done the same thing, sometimes honors them. (Don’t ask for “Send in the Clowns” or “Strangers in the Night,” but Cole Porter is always a sure bet.) Cleverly, he adds “What I’m going to do next has some of the same notes.” He knows how to win over an audience, turning potential hecklers into fans.

It takes a bit to get going, but by the time this terrific twosome join forces like a pair of horns on “It’s a Most Unusual Day,” we’re back at MGM in 3/4 time. On “Hello, Dolly!”, which he used to perform as a kid at bar mitzvahs and weddings, Michael displays an astoundingly accurate mimicry of Louis Armstrong. I hope I never hear that ossified chestnut again, but to hear him do it once is like a party favor. Marilyn Maye is like the party itself. Her finesse as a master interpreter of lyrics is deliciously evident on “Every Time,” the great Martin-Blane ballad from Best Foot Forward. Together they bring untarnished creativity to a medley of songs with “wonderful” in the title (“It’s a Wonderful World,” “Something Wonderful,” “Mr. Wonderful,” “S’Wonderful,” etc. The idea is pretty wonderful, too. Everybody’s doing tributes to Marvin Hamlisch, just one of the many musical talents we lost this year, and Michael’s intense needlepoint on “The Way We Were” put a lump in everyone’s throat.

Liza Minnelli, who was in the star-spangled audience, yelled out Irving Berlin’s “I Love a Piano,” which her mother sang in Easter Parade. The arrangement that poured forth from pianist Tedd Firth and his merry band of ace musicians showcased a variety of musical styles, from Kansas City to Gershwin to Jerry Lee Lewis. Ms. Maye cooked up her own unique brand of rhythm on the range, from “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” to the intricate flatted fifths in tempo on Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five,” a jazz aria almost no singer has the courage to try for fear of failure. She never fails. Solid and versatile, she’s capable of smoldering sensuality, bluesy waltz-time bravura and swinging sass, while Mr. Feinstein’s voice gets stronger all the time, making it possible to do justice at last to complex songs from West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, as well as the sweeter muses like Rodgers and Hart.

This remarkable couple might seem mismatched on the downbeat, but oh the encores! They close Sept. 22, so get there fast and jump for joy. It’s a show that leaves no stone unturned as they shake all the bugs out of all the rugs. Long after Feinstein’s closes at the end of the year, this is an act you’ll remember.

rreed@observer.com

Cook and Feinstein.

Among the things the cherished soprano Barbara Cook and the cabaret saloon singer and pianist Michael Feinstein possess in abundance—aside from the pleasure of singing, sharing the stage with other respected artists and spreading joy—is an undiminished passion for preserving the classics in the Great American Songbook. Their annual holiday shows at Feinstein’s at Loew’s Regency no longer have a seasonal bent. They’re just a welcome excuse for some favorite songs, served up in tinsel and holly. It’s not until the encore at the end of the evening that they examine their first and only nod to the festive season of eggnog and mistletoe, with Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas.” Still, if you can afford the outrageous prices, the show will leave you with a Yuletide glow through the end of December.

Fresh from her triumph at the Kennedy Center honors, Ms. Cook is fresh as a daisy as she opens with two other Berlin sunflowers from Annie Get Your Gun, “I Got the Sun in the Morning” and “I Got Lost in His Arms.” Mr. Feinstein, who acts as gracious host and tour guide through a program of year-round delights, takes advantage of the new age of sexual freedom of expression to turn Marilyn and Alan Bergman’s passionate lyrics to “Fifty Percent of Him” into a declaration of same-sex love. It stops the show all over again, just like it did every night when Dorothy Loudon sang it in the Broadway show Ballroom, only with a different slant. Together, they feed each other like kids sharing an ice cream cone on bouncy duets like “Deed I Do” and “Do Do Do.” Caveats? Mr. Feinstein’s blends “Let Me Love You” with “Let There Be Love” as a tribute to mentors Bobby Short and Mabel Mercer in an arrangement that seems a bit rushed, and I wish Ms. Cook would ditch the ossified “Here’s to Life” as her new theme song. Overdone, oversung and overexposed on every CD by every singer of the past decade, it’s a tune that has been wrung dry. On the plus side, neither performer is a jazz singer, but with the great Mike Renzi at the keyboard (don’t forget he was the accompanist of choice for Mel Tormé, Lena Horne and Peggy Lee and currently works with Jack Jones) even Ms. Cook swings her way through the Duke Ellington classic “I’m Beginning to See the Light” with the best big-band pluck since Kitty Kallen made the song famous with the Harry James Orchestra. A nod to Fred and Ginger follows with no dancing on the postage-stamp stage, which is good, but a warm, sharing kind of sweetness on “The Way You Look Tonight” is even better. For a finale, you can almost see children everywhere counting the hours until the arrival of Santa on Christmas Eve as their vices meld exquisitely on the Beatles’ lovely lullaby “Good Night.” And that’s exactly what it is, this mutual admiration society of charm, music and artistry that is rather like folding in the egg whites in a Christmas soufflé.

rreed@observer.com

Just to make sure nobody thinks a nice Jewish boy has gone totally farblondjet, singing songs about Santa Claus and Christmas, Michael always mixes up the musical Hallmark cards about jingle bells and chestnuts roasting on an open fire with standards from the Great American Songbook appropriate for any season. I guess you could call it a "Great American Holiday Songbook." So don't be shocked when he belts out "What Did I Have That I Don't Have?" or croons his way through "For All We Know" and "I'll Be Seeing You." He does explain that almost every beloved Christmas song in history was written by a Jew. (I mean, was Irving Berlin a Presbyterian?) Good example: He opens with two rousing carols by Jerry Herman, "We Need a Little Christmas," from Mame, and "The Best Christmas of All," which Angela Lansbury introduced in the TV musical Mrs. Santa Claus, flying across the stars in a sleigh. Then, moving off topic, he segues from Leslie Bricusse's beautiful ballad "You and I" from Goodbye, Mr. Chips into "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and then hits the ground running with the great Kay Thompson's swinging "Holiday Season." Only the spirit of a heart flung wide could imagine how Frank Sinatra might have celebrated Chanukah in Yiddish with Nelson Riddle's orchestra and a horror called "The Dreidel Song" (by a pair of composers named Grossman and Goldfarb), the point of which eluded me totally. A dreidel, we all learned, is a spinning top. I thought a spinning top was just a spinning top, and without one, I guess you're topless. 

At the piano, or spinning his own top with a terrific band arranged by John Oddo, Mr. Feinstein is always full of surprises and joy. Once you adjust to the fact that this is not a Christmas show full of customary fairy lights and eggnog, you are free to just have fun. I'd like to say he's got rosy-cheeked energy accompanied by a few extra dollops of enthusiasm, but he's a vegan, and I've yet to see a vegan with rosy cheeks. The enthusiasm never flags, however, and the voice is stronger than ever. One wonders if that voice will decline as years go by, but for now, Michael Feinstein is at the height of his vocal power, charm and holiday ho-ho-ho.

rreed@observer.com 

The concept for this paired show is credited to Mr. Feinstein and Barry Humphries, Edna’s nom d’offstage, plus their respective spouses, Terrence Flannery and Lizzie Spender, and it’s a vaguely though not particularly intriguing idea. It was even mildly amusing in the fall, when the two camps were issuing dueling press releases. But the shtick is already tiresome once you’re handed two essentially identical Playbills on entering the theater—one with Mr. Feinstein on its cover; the other featuring Edna. In the end, it results in a tedious and unsuccessful evening at the theater.

Mr. Feinstein opens, and he dares to remove an arrangement of Edna’s signature gladiolas from atop the piano; Edna, later, has Mr. Feinstein carried offstage. Eventually, and unsurprisingly, the two learn to share, bonding over a shared fondness for koalas, the American songbook and medleys. You’ll forgive me for giving away the climatic finish: A piece of scenery overhead rotates, and the show becomes All About We. Kindergarten teachers everywhere beam.

It’s too bad the concept is so bad, because the performances are quite good. Mr. Feinstein remains the master of the songbook, and Mr. Humphries, as Edna, is funny as ever.

But the shtick is exhausting. (The usually incisive Christopher Durang wrote the book, together with the stars.) And the two talents are poorly matched: Edna’s broad, be-sequined, larger-than-life comedy fills the big theater, smothering Mr. Feinstein’s suavely tuxedoed musicianship. The legendary pianist is left looking awkward and uncomfortable onstage, merely and unconvincingly—forgive the groaner, though it’s in the spirit of the show—Edna’s straight man.

If the problem with All About Me is that it rests on a single, uncompelling idea, the problem with The Book of Grace is that it has too many of them.

The latest effort from playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, who won a Pulitzer Prize for Topdog/Underdog in 2002, The Book of Grace opened a week ago at the Public Theater, where Ms. Parks is halfway through a three-year tenure as the inaugural holder of its master writer chair. The writing is indeed masterful: intelligent, elliptical dialogue, compellingly drawn characters, intricately crafted exposition. And the acting is superb, from a trio including the capable veterans Elizabeth Marvel and John Doman and a charismatic young actor, Amari Cheatom.

The play is on one level an interesting if familiar domestic drama: a domineering, oppressive dad (Mr. Doman, here a Border Patrol officer named Vet) and his intimidated, enabling wife (Ms. Marvel, the diner waitress Grace, who is secretly compiling a scrapbook with “evidence of good things,” her titular “Book of Grace”), whose life is upended by the return of Dad’s son from a first marriage (Mr. Cheatom as Buddy, back from military service and seeking either a fight or an apology from Vet).

But there’s also much more. Directed by James Macdonald on a clever Eugene Lee set that’s a simple living room with the sandy floor of a desert and sandbags behind, Book of Grace piles shock on top of shock (did Vet sexually abuse Buddy as a child? What’s the relationship between Buddy and Grace? What kind of person considers Timothy McVeigh a hero?) and seems to indict, variously, distant fathers, military culture, xenophobia, the sort of fervid patriotism that gives rise to the Minutemen, consumer culture and, perhaps, the country and government, too.

When the final blackout came on the night I attended, the audience didn’t immediately begin applauding—they weren’t sure that the play was over.

joxfeld@observer.com

Michael Feinstein & Cheyenne Jackson: The Power of Two
Feinstein’s at Loews Regency

It's a new world, dude. If two men can raise their glasses to toast their own weddings, they might as well lift their voices to serenade each other with love songs. If Phylicia Rashad can now play Elizabeth Ashley’s sister in August: Osage County on Broadway, Michael Feinstein and Cheyenne Jackson should be able to gaze into each other’s eyes and sing “We Kiss in a Shadow” onstage at Feinstein’s at Loews Regency. Which is exactly what they’re doing through June 27.

They tell you upfront, opening with Cy Coleman and David Zippel’s “You’re Nothing Without Me” from City of Angels, that this is a cabaret act celebrating partnerships of all kinds—work, play, friendship and love. The twofold point of this show is that (1) same-sex relationships, out of the closet in the sunshine of day where everyone can see, is an idea whose time has come, and (2) now is the time when everyone can be whatever or whomever they want to be. To prove it, Mr. Feinstein quotes Victor Hugo, of all people: “Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come.” I think he was talking about the French Revolution, but whatever. Songs like Marshall Barer’s “The Time Has Come” certainly do. In the old days, if Liberace had sung these songs to the headwaiter in Vegas, everyone would have run screaming to the sheriff’s office. But Mr. Feinstein’s fans are unfazed. They like him any way they can get him.

They like Cheyenne Jackson, too. Capricious and self-contained, with a voice as big as his biceps, he sometimes threatens to overwhelm the lyrics. But there’s no denying his talent is vast, and on the occasion when he trusts the word “subtlety” long enough to settle dreamily into a ballad, he owns the room. It’s an interesting concept. The tall, strapping hunk from Idaho on roller skates in the moronic Xanadu, and the suave, groomed Jewish keeper of the keys to the Great American Songbook from the Big Apple, accompanied by a swinging six-piece band led by Rosemary Clooney’s arranger-pianist, John Oddo, look like Mutt and Jeff singing songs by Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Gershwins, but they are a formidable musical pair whose voices soar together like choirboys with ambitions beyond the apse.

They call this act “The Power of Two,” from a song by the Indigo Girls they admire a great deal more than I do, and their choice of material represents quite a stretch. In a show dedicated to a New Age in which all unions are possible, songs like Earl Brown’s “If I Can Dream” and Duke Ellington’s “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” take on new meaning. The idea that we now live in a time when anything goes is not exactly groundbreaking. We already know that. Here lies a slight problem. Since the stripping away of every conceivable prejudice seems like a moral “given” in any contemporary human equation, I’m not entirely certain I see the actual point of the show, and I did not always feel like I was learning anything new. So I just stopped worrying and started listening. The rewards are lovely. No lyrics were cut and changed to fit the pattern, and besides—singing same-gender songs has been a staple of every Irish tenor’s repertoire since “Danny Boy.” What’s worse is when lyrics are twisted into idiocy for political correctness. (Anyone remember Ella Fitzgerald singing “Have You Met Sir Jones”?) But I digress. They can josh all they want to about being “the millennium Steve and Eydie” or a singing Leopold and Loeb. The bottom line is that Michael Feinstein and Cheyenne Jackson, on both solos and in duets, have conceived an unusual, provocative entertainment that makes you think and snap your fingers at the same time. Their mutual admiration society in “The Power of Two” is contagious.

Is it just us or is there something kinda Brady in the air? Jan? We're waiting on you!

On his Web site, he wrote: “The vision for the Shaw will be similar to its New York counterpart and will present many of the multigenerational artists who are best appreciated in a more intimate theatrical setting, but it will also have a more Eurocentric flavor. We plan to present a Songwriters’ series, a Legends series and evenings of special tributes that will run the gamut of all different types of good music.” The theater is part of the Novotel London St. Pancras Hotel on Euston Road, next to the British Library and the St. Pancras train station.

“We need a little Christmas … right this very minute,” sings Michael Feinstein in the opening number of his annual holiday show at Feinstein’s at the Loews Regency (through Dec. 29). I don’t know about that. I haven’t recovered from Thanksgiving yet, and I’ve grown hostile toward the yearly pushing, grabbing and commercial extortion that Christmas has become. But we could all use a little cheer, and this show is guaranteed to make you smile.

Like all theme shows that personify the word cabaret, the ho-ho-ho holiday moniker (Michael calls the 2007 edition “Winter Dreams”) is just an excuse to perform whatever strikes his fancy. How else do you explain a Christmas show that includes Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” and ends with “Somewhere” from West Side Story? Accompanied by three swaying backup singers and a six-piece band conducted by ace pianist-arranger John Oddo that includes first-class stars like Jay Leonhart and Bucky Pizzarelli, Michael prepares a feast that includes everything from the swinging Johnny Green tune “The Steam Is on the Beam” (immortalized by Kay Thompson) to sublime ballads like the exquisite Johnny Mandel-Dave Frishberg ballad “You Are There” and what Rosemary Clooney used to call her “revenge medley” (“I Cried for You”, “Who’s Sorry Now?” and “Goody Goody”). Take that, you rascal, you. But Michael doesn’t forget Christmas, or Hanukkah either. Two fingers of Jerry Herman eggnog are heady indeed, and Irving Berlin’s petrified “White Christmas” returns to life, however briefly. Michael always comes up with something unusual, but I must admit I did not find “Where Can I Go?”, a dour and doleful Jewish anthem with lyrics half in English and half in Yiddish, by a man named Leo Fuld, whose family perished in Auschwitz, very indicative of the Yuletide spirit. But the funereal pace picked up instantly with Kay Thompson’s famous arrangement of “Jingle Bells,” which is still like nothing heard before or since. Carols and canapés large and small are the order of the night, and you go away happy, and feeling like you want to buy some mistletoe.

In bum times like these, when the movies lull and Broadway

naps, one can often find solace in music. Buxom and brassy, Carol Woods is a Broadway veteran (and one of the stars

of the upcoming revival of Stephen Sondheim's Follies ) with a voice as big as her girdle and a talent for letting

it rip on pop songs and blues that almost always end with audiences on their

feet yelling for more. From Smokey Joe's

Cafe to Chicago , she's been

stealing the show for years, and from the many times I have worked with her on

the sold-out "Lyrics and Lyricists" shows at the 92nd Street Y, I can testify

to her ability to turn a center spot into a star turn at the drop of a hat. It

is, therefore, quite natural that she would be drawn to the world of cabaret

with an act designed to show off her range, versatility and talent. The

downside is that the misguided act she is presenting at Arci's (through Feb.

24) sabotages her true identity so often that you want to ask the old What's My Line? question, "Will the real

Carol Woods please stand up?"

Like so many fine actresses who sing, she hasn't learned to

rely on her inner resources without the

control of a strong director. This may be a logical concern in the

theater, but not in cabaret. In the intimate confines of a club with a stage

the size of a file folder, Ms. Woods would be wise to follow a few basic rules:

Don't try to be a cross between Dinah Washington and Leontyne Price. Just tell

us who you are. Sing the songs you love. Ditch the pretentious patter and the

dumb one-liners and share a couple of personal anecdotes, skip the narrative

song setups and let your chops do the rest. Throw us a curve; we can take it.

But above all, trust the material and be yourself. We are here for one reason

only-to see and hear you, not the work of your director, not the songs somebody

chose that do not fit your style and personality, not the forced and unnatural

dialogue somebody else wrote to flesh out an "act" that could fit a dozen other

performers better.

I've heard so many noisy singers who scream, shout and

shriek their way to oblivion that volume holds no interest for me whatsoever.

Ms. Woods has plenty of volume, and she knows what to do with it. She has

lived, and she knows about phrasing. She can wound your heart on a ballad, but

Francesca Blumenthal's lovely "Lies of Handsome Men" is not the right song for a red-hot mama to use as an example.

She can modulate and phrase delicately, with perfect enunciation, but Rupert

Holmes' "The People That You Never Get to Love" is better suited to ladies with

more vulnerability and fewer vocal dynamics. And I don't know what "Alfie" and

"Hey There" are doing in this act, not by any stretch of the imagination.

If you're as unique as Carol Woods, why recycle the soil

Dionne Warwick and Rosemary Clooney have already plowed? I've heard her stop

shows and shatter crystal, but in a cabaret act that showcases too many

secondary aspects of her diverse talent, it's only when she gets around to

Harold Arlen's "Blues in the Night" and "Chair Song," a rocking

rhythm-and-blues number made famous by the great Ruth Brown ("If I can't sell

it, I'm gonna sit down on it / I ain't gonna give it away!") that the warmth,

humor and pounce her fans have come to expect really break through.

Rumors drifting out of

the rehearsals for the forthcoming all-star Broadway revival of Follies inform us that she is burning up

the floor with a volcanic version of "Who's That Woman?," a question that you

could understandably ask after seeing Carol Woods' current act at Arci's. For a

definitive answer, I guess we'll have to wait for Follies .

Feinstein Himself at

Feinstein's

One of the best things about Michael Feinstein is the way he

plays his audiences like harp strings. In his current Valentine's Day interlude

at the Regency (through Feb. 17), he sings love songs with an exciting

six-piece band, occasionally taking over the piano keys himself for the

dreamier chords he plays so well. Reaching out over a sea of blue hair and

walking sticks, he's in his element.

On the Sammy Cahn–Jimmy

Van Heusen evergreen "The Second Time Around," when he sings the familiar lyric

"Love, like youth, is wasted on the young," they sigh and nod knowingly. With

the muted trumpet lines by seasoned sideman Joe Shepley, even the most jaded

cynic will probably start nodding appreciatively, too. At these prices, these

are his people and these are their songs. They hum. They sing the tags. They

drool over "My Romance." They swoon over the ossified "My Funny Valentine" in a

"Harry, he's playing our song" kind of way, unaware that the other wives in the

room are looking at their balding husbands and thinking the same thing. It's

all vanilla, but it works.

Even taking "This Can't Be Love" at the speed of a Kentucky

Derby winner, Mr. Feinstein cannot swing. But he can always be counted on to

assemble the best musicians, investigate the most intelligent lyrics and keep

old songs alive. What's not to like? These days, while most performers serve up

three-alarm chili, Michael Feinstein settles for blancmange.

Peter Marshall, Boysinger.com

For pure,

out-of-this-world singing in the style of the big-band crooners, I urge you to

investigate I'm Glad There Is You , a

sensational new CD by Peter Marshall. Yes, the one and only handsome, affable

Peter Marshall, whom you loved for years as the best host in the history of Hollywood Squares , has really recaptured the lush sounds of the good

old days of Crosby, Sinatra and Torme. His vocal stylings have been one of the

best-kept secrets in music. (He's played the big rooms in Vegas and co-starred

with Julie Harris in the ill-fated Sammy Cahn–Jimmy Van Heusen show Skyscraper , but his talents are largely

unknown to New Yorkers.) This is his long-awaited first solo CD. It is a

marvel.

If he sounds thrillingly

like the great Dick Haymes, there's an obvious reason. Mr. Haymes was once

married to film star Joanne Dru, who was Mr. Marshall's sister, and his

laid-back, uncluttered, no-frills phrasing has been a very real influence. The

14 cuts on this remarkable collection reflect that kind of purity, with

gorgeous arrangements by Ray Ellis, Alan Copeland, Sammy White and Larry White

and a 46-piece orchestra that comprises some of the greatest studio musicians

the West Coast has to offer. Mr. Marshall sounds as relaxed in that setting as

Sinatra in one of his legendary 4 a.m. sessions with Nelson Riddle, and the

phrasing is just to die for. Especially on "Everything Happens To Me"-I have

never heard notes bent like that on this song. In fact, I have never heard the

song sung with so much hip freshness.

The perfect combination

of voice (as warm or cool as the songs demand), brilliant arrangements, great

material and easy, conversational phrasing make this a treasure. I am so jazzed

up by the chuckles, the occasional been-around crack in the voice, the low lush

dives on words like "love" and the first-rate songs-the Burton Lane–E.Y.

Harburg jewel "Poor You" has always been an overlooked favorite of mine-that

this CD has rarely wandered far from my stereo since it arrived. "Oh, You Crazy

Moon," "This Heart of Mine," "Fools Rush In," "I'll Close My Eyes," "I'm Glad

There is You"--the repertoire is faultless, unhackneyed and interpreted with fresh

vision.

There are new

discoveries, too: "Night Life," a song unknown to me (by Willie Nelson, of all

people!) turns out to be the most swinging thing on the list. The string intro

on "The More I See You" is worth rewinding just to hear the arrangement before

the voice comes in. It all has a wisdom, maturity and appeal that makes the

material timeless. I know there's a tongue-in-cheek theme (boy singer from the

World War II days of radio transcriptions, like the weekly show Dick Haymes and

Helen Forrest used to do for war bonds), but the hip singing transcends that

theme and emerges as contemporary as any vocal stylist can sound today.

Although there are plans afoot to release this CD in stores,

Mr. Marshall is presently distributing it himself. The only way you can get it

at the time of this writing is via the Internet. Mr. Marshall has his

ownWebsite: www.boysinger.com. Log on for complete details on how to order; he

ships immediately. Trust me on this: It is one CD that no lover of the art of

the American popular song can afford to be without.

Now isn't it time for him

to play a New York room like Feinstein's at the Regency and reacquaint the

world with what a terrific singer Peter Marshall is? In a crippled world of

honks and screams and terminal laryngitis, listening to the vanishing art of

singing like this is like learning how to walk again after a broken leg.