’Tis the season, apparently, for famous seventy-seven-year-old actresses who played super-vixen bitches on television soap operas to perform on the New York cabaret scene. In mid-November, Joan Collins brought her One Night with Joan monologue to Feinstein’s Ballroom for multiple performances and a month later, Eileen Fulton (who played the role of Lisa Grimaldi on the popular CBS soap As the World Turns for an incredible fifty-year run) graced the stage at Don’t Tell Mama for just one night with her show I Remember . . . or at least I try.

While both women are still beautiful, possess self-deprecating senses of humor and packed the rooms with long-time fans that ate up the stories about their TV glory days, the major difference in the shows was that Fulton sang . . . or at least she tried.

Fulton’s show was more a monologue about her life and career broken up by snippets of songs than it was a true thirteen-song cabaret set. But the packed house filled with devotees from her soap life—which ended when Turns died last September—loved every minute. While Fulton’s voice is breathy and evocative, her range and power are limited, so director Diana Basmajian made very good choices on the material and exactly how much time the actress would spend singing (although a couple of the patter breaks could have been a tad shorter).

Entering in an elegant and classy black evening gown, while singing a piece of Stephen Sondheim’s “I Remember,” Fulton soon loosened up the audience with lines like, “I’m older than I thought I was,” and “During my career, I was always getting the parts of bitches, hookers and lesbos.” But Fulton ratcheted up the drama quotient with her tender rendition of the Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler classic “Stormy Weather,” which she delivered from the perspective of a woman past her prime and longing for the good old days with her lover. Then came an ideal segue into two Rodgers and Hart songs with the same melody: “Blue Moon” and “The Bad in Every Man” (from the 1934 film Manhattan Melodrama), the latter a song with some new lyrics by Ms. Fulton to reflect her experience marrying an already married man. (He told her he was divorced!) Fulton gave the medley a sassy, swinging feel and you couldn’t help think that during her life, the actress had been the woman cheated on as well as the other woman.

The mid-show “audio-visual” presentation featured Fulton reading out of an As the World Turns Storybook while photos from the soap were projected behind her. After reminding her fans that she “made ‘bad’ popular” and that she “was playing a bitch when [fellow soap vixen] Susan Lucci was playing in a sandbox,” Fulton ran through stories about her eight soap opera husbands with a “12 Days of Christmas”-style riff for good measure. The bit was clever and fun, if a bit long, and her Music Director, Bob Goldstone, was masterful on the piano adding drama to the memory trip.

The second half of the set was dominated by holiday-related songs and Fulton and her team again made the right choices. With “Hard Candy Christmas” (music and lyrics by Carol Hall), Fulton bemoaned being unemployed. After a verse of the French Christmas carol “Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella,” Fulton transitioned into a hilarious story about biting the head off of a Baby Jesus made of soap when she was a child. “Isn’t it ironic that I spent fifty years of my life on a soap!” She then turned “Do You Hear What I Hear?” into more of a dramatic reading, before finishing up in bawdy style with “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” In Fulton’s version, Grandma’s presents include Maalox, a sex toy and a fuzzy footy pajama with the crotch cut out.

It was an ironic climax, considering Fulton once had a supposed “Granny Clause” added to her ATWT contract (in the ’70s) that prevented her character from becoming a grandmother. Now Fulton seems to have embraced her age and that’s what made her show so charming. She made the atmosphere warm and cozy and it was as if your still adorable, ageless and fun grandma was singing to you and telling you bedtime stories while a fire blazed next to the Christmas tree. The only thing missing was a hot toddy.

Stephen Hanks
Cabaret Scenes
December 17, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org