Broadway Unplugged
Broadway Unplugged, which lined up about 20 Broadway performers for the third year in a row to croon their favorite showtune standards without the assistance of a microphone, originally created to expand upon the Broadway by the Year concert gimmick of having such talented actors do several numbers off-mic, here expanded to a full concert of acoustic wonder.
However, it also occurred to me tonight that having a cabaret/musical theater in which actors are forced to perform solos with no microphone changes more than just their voice. It affects the way they use their body, how they look at the audience, and overall adds more intensity to the emotional experience. After all, by removing the microphone, it's as of we've removed a crutch or a training wheel away from the singer. Without it, he is truly onstage alone! He is no longer able to hide his body weight behind the microphone and press it to his face, but must move freely around the stage.
Though most of the performances tonight were quite good, the showstopping performance, without question, went to recent Tony Award winner Beth Leavel of THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, who performed "Surabaya-Santa" from Jason Robert Brown's SONGS FOR A NEW WORLD, his edgy, wonderful 1996 revue which would make a great Off-Broadway revival at say Second Stage or Roundabout.
Each time I see one of these concerts, I wonder whether they would be better with or without Scott Siegel's narration, which turns an event that could easily be an 80 minute intermissionless concert into a 2-and-a-half hour one including the mandatory bathroom break. Overall, I'd have to lean towards keeping him at his podium. He deserves the right to be there if he wants to be. After all, he created the series. If he wants to crack jokes and add some dramaturgical history, I say let him have a field day. Let him be "The Man in Chair" (i.e. THE DROWSY CHAPERONE).
Here is the full song list.
Nancy Anderson - "Naughty Marietta"
Sarah Uriarte Berry - "Somebody Somewhere"
Chuck Cooper - "All I Care"
Roosevelt Andre Credit & Bruce Johnson - "Muddy Water"
Bill Daugherty & Connie Pachl - "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil"
Mary Bond Davis - "Down with Love"
Jeffry Denman - "Yankee Doodle Dandy"
Lisa Howard - "I Dreamed a Dream" (who of course was superior to that trainwreck of a Fantine now on Broadway...though I did notice a conspicously loud quantity of coughing at the start of her performance. Fishy?)
Barg Jungr - "When You're Good to Mama"
Eddie Korbich - "Love in a New Tempo"
Marc Kudisch - "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise"/"The First Time" (who looks much less scary with his full head of hair grown back)
Douglas Ladnier - "You'll Never Walk Alone"
Beth Leavel - "Surabaya-Santa"
Norm Lewis - "Golden Rainbow"/"I Got Rhythm"
Liz McCartney - "Coronet Man"
William Michals - "The Impossible Dream"
Euan Morton - "Not While I'm Around"
John Lloyd Young - "Never Will I Marry"
Finale - "For Good"/"Goodnight My Someone" (dedicated to the memory of Edith Kantor, Broadway by the Year financial supporter who passed away three weeks ago)
To show what I mean regrading how the hair affects Marc Kudisch, let's compare his hair and hairless pics.
