Kander & Ebb wrote:
“You gotta ring them bells, you gotta ring them bells / It’s such a happy thing to hear ‘em ting a ling”
Well, Bebe Neuwirth really rang my bells last week at 54 Below, where she landed a most welcome knockout punch. To not put the point too lightly, Bebe’s show was Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
54 Below opened last June, and I could kick myself from here to eternity for not rushing to this venue months ago with the great lineup of stars that have already played there, including Patti LuPone, Norbert Leo Butz, Linda Lavin, and Rebecca Luker. The atmosphere itself is the quintessence of old New York supper clubs, the elegant tables and booths filled with sophisticated lovers of first-class Broadway performance. For a fleeting moment, I thought I even caught a glimpse of the spectres of the elegant Arlene Francis and Dorothy Kilgallen from the old What’s My Line? days holding court at one of the tables.
Bebe’s show has ended now—I call her “Bebe” because she brushed my left shoulder softly as she breezed by my table—but the memories of her performance and the elegant space in which she performed are still very much alive and well in my mind. The reason I’m writing about this show after the fact is that I’m hoping to whet the appetite of NYC denizens as well as lovers of Broadway around the world who haven’t made it to 54 Below yet and now have the privilege of going there and partaking in the incredible talent on display.
The evening was made up of charming personal stories and story songs, as well as little asides to the audience, as when she asked one person longingly with a bit of a whimper, “Is that a chocolate cookie I smell? A dancer can smell a cookie a hundred miles away.” Well, we would all have gladly given her our last cookie at that point, but at 54 (nothing to do with the club’s name), you don’t keep a lithe and sensuous body like hers by noshing on carbs.
Bebe began the evening with “I Love a Piano,” her audition piece when she started in the biz. I was a little concerned because you could drive a NYC tour bus through the vibrato on that one. But by the next number, the vibrato became powerfully nuanced and added dramatically to each of the following songs.
Of course, with multiple talents, Bebe didn’t just sing the songs but acted them out exquisitely with controlled intensity, making each one a magical theatrical production. And being a dancer, she moved, even on that small stage, with the grace of a willow in a gentle breeze. When she sang, “(I’d Love To Get You On a) Slow Boat To China,” it was so real I could feel the movement of the boat under me and wondered if I’d need to jump ship and find some dramamine. When she sang Weill’s “The Bilbao Song” about a rough and tumble bar that had been sanitized out of recognition, I drifted back a few decades to when I used to go to Joe Allen’s on 46th Street. What a place! That was NYC! Fun, noisy, beer flowing, burgers dripping, sawdust on the floor, and Broadway guys and dolls whooping it up after the show.
And that feeling of excitement triggered yet another memory of a somewhat more tony spot on the East Side where I was almost decapitated by Melina Mercouri. That Ultimate Greek Diva, and perhaps last of the Greek goddesses, was dancing on a table like a crazed Dionysian maenad while wildly throwing and smashing plates. So many fun memories were being conjured up by the music Bebe sang.
Here are a couple snippets of “Bilbao” she snarled, perhaps remembering her own special places that have now sadly fallen on “better” times.
Hey Joe [Joe Allen??], play that old song they always played.
I don’t know if it would have brought you joy or grief but
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
It was fantastic
Beyond belief
The brandy bottles smashing through the air
And the chairs flying everywhere
Now they’ve cleaned it up and made it middle-class
With potted palms and aspree
Just another place to put your ass
She sang one great song after another—Piaf, Weill, Kander & Ebb, Berlin, and on and on. One of my favorites of the evening was Tom Waits’ down and dirty “Invitation To The Blues”:
Well she’s up against the register
With an apron and a spatula
With yesterday’s deliveries
And the tickets for the bachelors
She’s a moving violation
From her conk down to her shoes
But it’s just an invitation to the blues
What a woman, what a show, and what a great new place to go. See you there!
JOHN THOMSEN
