Word: sondheimer
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Madonna once again confounds our expectations--and, at times, exasperations. At first a star more famous for attitude than for voice, she proved, in the 1990 Dick Tracy, equal to the sere demands of Stephen Sondheim's songs. Here again she does a tough score proud. Lacking the vocal vigor of Elaine Paige's West End Evita, Madonna plays Evita with a poignant weariness, as if death has shrouded her from infancy. And dressed in sumptuous gowns or feeling life seep away, she has more than just a little bit of star quality. Just before Eva's death, she sings...
...ambitious production of a classic, like the Mainstage "Three Sisters" of 1995 and (presumably) the forthcoming "Coriolanus"; the hip contemporary play, like last year's "Fat Men in Skirts" or 1994's "Six Degrees of Separation"; and the musical, which can range from a low-budget house affair to Sondheim overdoses of "A Little Night Music" and "Company...
...walks, it talks; it vamps, it camps; it does Mozart and Sondheim, Gershwin and Strauss. What more, indeed, could Kate deLima need? Singlehandedly, she's taken over Harvard musical theater; one could hardly imagine a "Marriage of Figaro" or a "Fledermaus" getting off the ground without her. Not to mention a one-woman cabaret act, complete with schmaltz, Catskills-style patter, and a big band...
...away; oh, where is our Hedda Hopper, our Liz Smith?) She sang ballads and love songs and novelty songs, slow songs and fast songs, Weill and Porter and Loewe and Bernstein, in addition to Gershwin and, what she said was her favorite (there's no accounting for such things), Sondheim. She strode on stage in front of the orchestra, futzed humorously with her red shawl, and broke right into "Nice Work If You Can Get It" without an awkward moment. She owned the stage -- a small stage, it's true, but she owned it nonetheless...
...Leonard Bernstein's pattersong "I Can Cook Too." "Blah Blah Blah" particularly allowed deLima to camp it up, leading the audience in a sing-along while capering to the absurd lyrics. (The screen on which the lyrics were projected was a nice touch, too.) As for the four Sondheim songs, including three in a row at the end, they were not too big a price to pay for the rest -- which is saying quite...