Word: luker
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...series also testifies to the stream of musical performers who haven't heard the form is dead. Why isn't there a new show each year for Martin Short, who wowed Encores! audiences in Burt Bacharach's Promises, Promises? Occasionally a supreme thrush like Judy Kuhn, Judy Kaye, Rebecca Luker, Faith Prince, Debbie Gravitte or Kristin Chenoweth gets a cushy job on Broadway, but few new shows give these beguilers a chance to wrap their pipes around classic pop. Encores! does (though it pays just $700 a week for stars and chorus boys alike). "I love the concept," says Williams...
Some of the shows have been commemorated on CD (not good enough--they all must be preserved!), but the magic moments occur in those long weekends onstage. A few to recall with a shivery thrill: the giddy glissandi of the Sing for Your Supper trio (Luker, Gravitte and Sarah Uriarte Berry) from The Boys from Syracuse; Kuhn, an angel lost in hell, singing The Man I Love from Strike Up the Band; the male chorale Some Girl Is on His Mind from Sweet Adeline--a rendition so pure and poignant that it left the City Center crowd in silent rapture...
...this version of Show Boat does ring with excellent voices nevertheless: Mark Jacoby's charming but feckless Ravenal, Rebecca Luker's steely Magnolia, Gretha Boston's ebullient Queenie and Lonette McKee's glorious Julie. (As Joe, Michel Bell sports an impressive basso profundo, but spoils Ol' Man River with a needlessly mannered performance.) Still, it is a relative nonsinger, John McMartin as Cap'n Andy, who is the surprising hit of the show: his desperate reenactment of the interrupted play-within-a-play, The Parson's Bride, is a comic highlight that stays in the mind...