You’ve got to hand it to the folks at New York’s Town Hall.  Created almost a century ago as a platform for open discussion of the issues of the day (although Margaret Sanger was arrested and carried off the stage that opening year for addressing a mixed-sex audience about contraception), in more recent years it has become a prime location for a sweeping variety of music events.

More than that, the Hall’s top brass have been astute enough to turn to Scott Siegel to create many of their annual cabaret and Broadway musical productions.  A long-time critic and writer on those subjects, Siegel’s fertile imagination and witty hosting keeps several series interesting and successful.  Broadway Originals! was the final production of this year’s triple-play Broadway Cabaret Festival threesome, and the Hall’s and his fifth Festival year.

Utilizing an assemblage of Tony Award-winning and nominated performers, Siegel paired them with the show songs that originally brought accolades in their original Broadway productions or major New York revivals. Broadway Originals! had little of the choreography or production numbers featured in the Festival’s opening night—A Tribute to David Merrick—the focus here was on the players and the songs in the Broadway performances that brought them kudos and recognition.

There were choice moments a-plenty.  Sharon McNight started things rolling with the appropriately egotistical rendition of “Hard to Be Diva” from Starmites that brought her a Tony nomination and a Theater World award.  The ever-impressive Marc Kudisch (pictured) (he’s earned three Tony nominations) proved chameleon-like as he first played the swish “proverbial black sheep” singing “Breezin' Through Another Day” from The Wild Party, then later returned to dazzle all as a truly mesmerizing snake with “The APple Tree" ("Forbidden Fruit”) from The Apple Tree.

A young and charming Celia Keenan-Bolger won a Drama Desk Award and a Theatre World Award as well as the Tony nomination for her role of Olive Ostrovsky in The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  Her song takes place at the contest finals, and the girl is alone.  Her mother is at an ashram in India and her father too busy to come.  Celia’s “My Friend, the Dictionary” was touching and one of the best moments of the show, also one of the rare times the band members joined the applause for a performer. Stephanie J. Block, as 9 to 5’s cuckolded wife, was as close to a showstopper as the night had, with an impassioned “Get Out and Stay Out.”

Siegel loves surprises, and one was the appearance of the youngest-ever winner of a Tony Award.  But eleven years old in 1991, Daisy Egan, now twenty-eight, recreated her “The Girl I Mean to Be” from The Secret Garden.

For the second act, Siegel gathered the entire cast of 1992’s Falsettos, offering nine numbers from the show.  Perhaps the two best were Barbara Walsh’s “Breaking Down,” and “Four Jews in a Room Bitching,” riotously done by Michael Rupert, Stephen Bogardus, Chip Zien and Jonathan Kaplan.

As I’ve noted before, the real regret of many of these Town Hall productions created by Scott Siegel is that they’re a one-time-only performance.  Luckily, at least his Broadway by the Year productions have been captured on CDs.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
October 18, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org