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This has been a heady theatrical week for David and me. Tuesday was Barrington Stage 2, Friday was Barrington Main Stage, Saturday was Berkshire Choral Festival and tonight was Mr. Finn's Cabaret at Barrington Stage. Whew! That's more shows than I saw in any week when I lived in New York!
Tonight Alix Korey did her 'Ethel Merman' show, Doin' What Comes Naturally', proving that there was really only one Ethel Merman.
Ms. Korey has a very loud voice and sang a lot of Ethel's songs, but I heard Merman many times on Broadway, and Ms. Korey is no Ethel Merman.
Actually, no one is or was Ethel Merman, except Ethel.
Ethel certainly had a big voice that could be heard in the back row of any second balcony in any theatre in the country, without amplification, but it was never pushed. It was just there!
Ms. Korey put on an interesting show combining tales from Ethel's career interspersed with songs from many of her Broadway shows.
Christopher Marlowe 
( no, not that one) was the able pianist.
Anyone who tries to do Ethel is almost bound to fail; she was unique.
Ms. Korey's voice always had a rough edge to it and, seeing the veins stand out in her neck, it is obvious where the voice was coming from. She has been singing like this for a number of years, apparently, so she must have an iron neck.
We get a few days off before our next theatrical venture. We'll try to be ready.
Why anyone but Amanda McBroom should be allowed to sing cabaret is beyond me. Alice and I saw her 5:00 p.m. show today and, as always, she blew me away.
This lady knows how to sing and act and reach out into the audience and tug at your heart strings. When she sings the song she wrote for her daddy, a movie star, whose name was always 'Four or five down from Errol Flynn', I get misty-eyed.
And so does she.
She is so much in the moment of every song she sings that her emotion becomes your emotion.
Michelle Brourman, her long-time pianist is an equally talented musician and the co-composer of many of her songs.
Together they put on a cabaret act that is as compelling as anything I have ever seen.
After the show I spoke to her and told her that she was one of my two favorite singers.
The other is Montserrat Caballe.
That is great company to be in.
Catch her on You Tube or at http://www.amcbroom.com/
You will be enchanted!
