Stage Buzz

Click the thumbnail above to find out about a cabaret fundraiser for the St. Bart’s Players on February 29th and March 1st, featuring Stage Buzz contributor David Pasteelnick.

Eat Sings Sondheim - a benefit cabaret for Emerging Artists on Monday, March 26th, at 8 pm!

Directed by Tom Wojtunik

Come hear some of your favorite EAT members croon Sondheim like you’ve never heard it before.

Performers include:
Paul Adams
David Bishop
Amy Bizjak
Christopher Borg
Marc Castle
Laura Fois
Erin Hadley
Steve Hauck
Ryan Hilliard
Brian Louis Hoffman
Rebecca Hoodwin
Shannon Marie Kerr
Sebastian La Cause
Jenny Lee Mitchell
Maya Rosewood
Kristen Wilkins

Tickets are $20 at the door. Reservations can be emailed to EATTheatre@aol.com . It will be performed at Emerging Artists Theatre, 311 W. 43rd St., 5th Floor, between 8th and 9th Avenues, Monday March 26th at 8pm

Stage Buzz Review by Jere Williams

These friends came to the Big Apple from Northwestern University with stars in their eyes and hope in their hearts … only to find out that life in Manhattan isn’t exactly all Sex in the City.  So they took to the internet to bitch about their love lives, or lack thereof, on their blogs.  And a cabaret show was born.

Clarice Mazanec and Kat Voboril’s Blonde Bloggers Bitching is roughly based on their real-life experiences dating a variety of losers and wannabes on their quest for that elusive Mr. Right.  Wow!  Who would ever have thought that even stunning blonde goddesses would have trouble finding a date?

Highlights included a priceless opening medley of showtunes representing dating life in NYC.  These two hooked me right away and I was laughing hysterically at their contemporary takes on some musical theatre classics, as well as more modern fare.  The popular favorite with the crowd was a rendition of Rent’s “Take Me As I Am,” which was later brought back as an encore at the end of the evening. 

There was clever juxtaposition afoot when the ladies chose a little-known song by George Gershwin, Otto Harbach, and Oscar Hammerstein II called “Vodka” to follow the Fred Barton perennial “Pour Me A Man” from Miss Gulch Returns.   Despite it’s pedigree, I wasn’t familiar with “Vodka,” a paean to the eponymous liquor, but it went along swimmingly with Barton’s comic, drunken ode to liquor as a substitute for people of the male persuasion.

Voboril and Mazanec ran the gamut from classic show tunes to more contemporary musical theatre (even including a song from one of this season’s Best Musical nominees, The Color Purple) to pop.  There were even original compositions from musical director Robby Stamper, who ably abetted the ladies on the piano.

Flaws were few … sure, the second half of the show is a little too ballad heavy and could use an uptempo number here and there, but each and every ballad was well chosen and well sung.  Voboril, the shorter of the two ladies, needs to be careful that the microphone stand isn’t so high that the mic blocks her face.  And some of the between-song patter, especially the prerecorded stuff, needs to be reconsidered as it tends to veer the evening a bit too preciously close to Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw and her sometimes ponderous Sex and the City voice overs.

I definitely recommend checking this show out whenever Voboril and Mazanec book a return engagement.  Keep an eye out for them.  These blondes are going places.

Further information:  Blonde Bloggers Bitching runs approximately 54 minutes and started 11 minutes late at the performance that I attended.  If you are interested in checking out the blogs that inspired the show, Clarice Mazanec’s is called Sometimes A Blonde Just Needs To Vent and Kat Voboril’s is Real Emotional Girl.

Stage Buzz Review by Byrne Harrison 

One’s a cute blonde with a killer smile.  The other’s a tall, sultry redhead.  Both have voices that are equally at home belting or crooning.  And they sure know how to work a crowd.

Even though For a Good Time Call . . . marks the cabaret debut of its stars, Melissa Driscol and Hannah Ingram, that’s not to say that the girls are inexperienced.  Both are proud members of the USO World Show Troupe, “The Liberty Belles,” and have performed for military audiences all over the country.  They also have a solid background in musical theatre, having performed in shows from My Fair Lady to Beauty and the Beast.

The eclectic mix of songs in For a Good Time Call . . . nicely shows off Driscol and Ingram’s talents.  Their versions of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Billy-A-Dick” and Cole Porter’s “Friendship” show that they can swing and jive with the best of them.  They demonstrate a similar talent for introspection with Ingram’s quiet and contemplative “As Long As I Can Dream,” by their accompanist, Robby Stamper, and Driscoll’s heartbreaking take on “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt.

But where Driscol and Ingram really shine is in their comic numbers.  In Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler’s “Nothing I Wouldn’t Do,” the ladies are being wooed by the same man and are willing to go to hilarious extremes to outdo each other.  Ingram sings of her attraction to the follicly-challenged in “I Want Them . . . ” (also by Goldrich and Heisler) and does it so well that no doubt several men in the audience thought of heading to a barber.  Driscol follows up with Julie Brown’s “‘Cause I’m a Blond,” a tribute to the girl who knows all the boys want her and all the girls want to be her.  Their final comic duet is the uproarious “Making Love Alone” by Marilyn Miller and Cheryl Hardwick.  Suffice it to say, it’s about exactly what you think it’s about.

Driscol and Ingram promise a good time and they certainly deliver in this enjoyable show.

Performed by Melissa Driscol and Hannah Ingram
The Duplex Cabaret Theatre
Mondays, April 3, 10, 17, 24 and May 8 at 9:30 pm