Carol Lipnik Plays Hell’s Kitchen: A Match Made in Heaven

There are what seems like hundreds of flaming queens playing piano bars in New York and most of them are the cookie-cutter variety. Kim Smith is more the boxcutter type. He books a weekly, semi Weimar-styled show Monday nights at 10:30 PM at Vlada Bar on 51st Street that he calls Vauxhall, performing alongside what seems to be a solidly eclectic mix of performers. Last night, his icy slink and velvet delivery matched to a stiletto wit, he played the diva role to a hilt even when technical difficulties pulled the spotlight off him (he blamed his excellent, incisively forte pianist). And he’s a dynamite singer. Bang Bang and You Keep Me Hanging On were reinvented as completely over-the-top noir cabaret, while what sounded like a mashup of Marlene Dietrich and Kylie Minogue seemed like a perfectly natural segue, supported by his steady stream of snarky one-liners.

The second act, Daryl Glenn, opened with a long, hilarious number from a recent Fringe Festival musical memorializing the good old degenerate days of the 1970s. Much of it was told from the point of view of a kid whose grandfather leaves him and goes off with another guy to have tea – wait a minute, nobody goes to have tea in the men’s room! And a couple of Cat Stevens numbers from Harold and Maude which as much as they might evoke fond memories of that twisted flick, are best left to their minimal place within its score. Off to the side, his pianist Karen Dryer alternated smartly between artful flourishes and a hammering chordal attack.

Carol Lipnik didn’t have the reverb pedal she loves to use but she did have her longtime collaborator Dred Scott on piano, which is all New York’s foremost noir cabaret singer really needs. He was in particularly psychedelic mode (which makes sense, given his long-running Tuesday midnight jazz trio show at the Rockwood), and without her favorite gizmo, Lipnik joined the rest of the bill by doing her whole set unamplified. What a voice: some people don’t need a mic. Without the EFX, the phantasmagorical stuff like the surreal When I Was a Mermaid and the romping Freak House Blues let her show off just how powerful the top of her four-octave range really is. And the most surreal number of all of them, Two-Headed Calf took on an extra poignancy: he may be destined for the museum tomorrow, dead, but right now he’s looking at the stars. And he can see twice as many of them as we can. She wrapped up her set with the most mesmerizing moment of the night, Love Dogs, a Rumi poem set to a quietly torchy soul melody and it was there that she brought down the lights with a warmly comforting, maple sugar soprano, the last thing you would think you’d ever get out of Carol Lipnik. But it’s in her repertoire. Which comes as no surprise: she’s always got something up her sleeve. Watch this space for news about her upcoming residency at PS 122 with John Kelly.

Cabaret Review: Michael Isaacs in Isaacs Schmisaacs at Don’t Tell Mama, NYC 5/20/09

Decked out in a bright green shirt and equally garish tie under a bathrobe, tumbling onstage with bottle in hand, 2009 MAC nominee Michael Isaacs effectively evoked the blithe yet doomed spirit of late 60s/early 70s pop crooner Harry Nilsson in an impressively well-chosen 21-song revue lit up with some sparkling comic bits and an outstanding supporting cast, imbued with characteristic out-of-the-box spontaneity by director Kristine Zbornik. A favorite of the Beatles, cult songwriter and Hollywood bad boy with several pop hits to his name, Nilsson (1941-94) walked a tightrope between sensitivity and schlock. Thankfully, Isaacs focused far more closely on the former than the latter, balancing boozy bravado with a significant undercurrent of unease. Ranging from a smooth, breathy lounge-pop croon to a showy glamrock baritone, he delivered the songs with a remarkably self-aware comedic timing that had him breaking the fourth wall whenever things threatened to go completely over the top.

While no amount of good comedy could rescue the show’s opener – the odious Three Dog Night hit One – from schlockville, things got brighter in a flash as the ensemble (the incomparable Bobby Peaco on piano, System Noise’s MAC-awardwinning Sarah Mucho on acoustic guitar, Elaine Brier, Maria Gentile and Jay Rogers on vocals plus a subtle, supple rhythm section featuring Dan Barton on bass) took the stage. Driving Along became an exercise in road rage, as Isaacs explained beforehand, speeding up to the point where the band couldn’t play it anymore and then stopped cold. Isaacs’ bathrobe finally came off for a medley of the Tin Pan Alley-esque 1941 (the year of Nilsson’s birth) and Daddy’s Song, Mucho singing the first verse with a vividly bitter astringence before passing the mic off to Isaacs. The Puppy Song and Best Friend got a vaudevillian treatment from Brier that brought the house down, punctuated by a hilarious sequence involving dog poop (it ended up with a couple at one of the front tables).

Peaco illuminated a wonderfully nocturnal version of Moonbeam with gentle rivers of triplets, Nashville gone glampop. In his cameo, Rogers offered a gentle, wistful take on another proto-power ballad, Lifeline, followed by Gentile raising the ante with her big, affecting vibrato on Without Her. One of the prettiest, warmest songs of the night belonged to Mucho, just her and Peaco taking a pensive, wary stroll through the abandoned gardens of Morning Glory.

Unsurprisingly, they saved the best for last. The best single song of the night was a hauntingly beautiful take of All I Think About Is You, Peaco singing with a tremendously moving, stark unsentimentality, Isaacs at the piano adding strikingly pointed jazz inflections. They wrapped it up with just Isaacs and Mucho on guitars and some devious, was-this-scripted-or-is-this-totally-improv moments, the guy cajoling and toying with the increasingly irked siren on soulful versions of  I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City (written for Midnight Cowboy but rejected by the producers) and then finally the one song that Nilsson didn’t write (that was the late Fred Neil) but won a Grammy for, Everybody’s Talkin’. This was the show’s last night, and it screams out from the gutter to the stars to be resurrected.

Cabaret Review: Sarah Mucho in Subterranean Circus at the Duplex, NYC 12/3/07

This was a triumphant return for Sarah Mucho. Although she’s best known as the frontwoman for the ferocious, artsy rock band System Noise, her roots are in the cabaret scene. Her Ziggy Stardust shows at Mama Rose’s and other rooms a couple of years ago earned her rave reviews in the theatre press and a MAC Award, but since then she’s been busy with the band. Subterranean Circus, as this show is billed, is a futuristic cautionary tale blending surreal, often sacrilegious humor with a haunting, apocalyptic vibe, with echoes of early 80s punk rock performance art. There’s not much of a book, aside from between-song jokes (which are hysterical). The songs are mostly rock, other than a heart-stopping version of Nature Boy, where Mucho, backed only by superb accordionist Annette Kudrak, gets to show off and belt at the very top of her spectacular range. Otherwise, over the course of a little less than an hour, Mucho and her band ran through an impressively imaginative reworking of material ranging from Bjork (Human Behavior, rearranged as acoustic, piano-based funk), to Johnny Cash (Man in Black, augmented with a very funny sermon mid-song and ending with the outro to Stairway to Heaven), to an absolutely wrenching take of Cat Power’s Werewolf, rearranged for just accordion and bass and played with the lights almost all the way down.

Mucho does two Kinks covers, Apeman and Lola, taking an irresistibly silly turn on harmonica on the former. The latter, recast as noir jazz driven by a steady, walking bassline has the phenomenally talented Bobby Peaco coming out from behind the piano to deliver a very amusing turn on vocals. Other highlights include Simon and Garfunkel’s Most Peculiar Man, with horror-movie music-box piano from Peaco, an equally macabre cover of a Blonde Redhead song and a powerhouse rendition of Dress by PJ Harvey.

There’s also a surprise ending (much of which may not have been scripted) that wouldn’t be fair to give away. And then there’s Mucho’s voice. One of the maybe half-dozen most compelling singers in all of rock, (think Mary Lee Kortes intensity and strength throughout her entire range, and Neko Case for all-stops-out sultriness and stylistic diversity), she’s never sung better than she did tonight.

Mucho’s supporting cast gets pretty much everything right. The diversity and authenticity of Peaco’s arrangements are amazing: the guy can literally play anything, from gospel to honkytonk to classical. Director Kristine Zbornik has everything timed so perfectly tight the audience doesn’t even have time to finish laughing before Mucho’s next emotion-tugging move is on them, equally effective in inducing chuckles as well as awestruck silence. The show continues this Friday Dec 7 at 9:30 PM and as of this writing reservations (required: the first show sold out quickly) are available, call (212) 255-5438.