When you watch Laura Benanti gleefully bounce around a cabaret stage, as she did recently at her show at Feinstein’s (or as she mischievously mispronounced FeinSTEEN’s”), you see a just-one-of-guys, down-to-earth diva combined with an accessible sensuality. It’s a compelling combination, especially when a playful sense of humor and a great voice come with the package. She can even rock a white thigh-length cocktail dress while wearing flats.

Benanti’s girlish charm, classic brunette beauty and captivating talent were on full display during Let Me Entertain You, a show built loosely around a theme mingling numbers from the musicals she has been in with favorite songs from her youth and early performing days. Benanti pulled the concept together with the force of her personality and sheer sense of fun. It’s not surprising that she’s on the short list for the role of Fanny Brice in a Funny Girl revival.

After opening with a quick “Let Me Entertain You”/”They All Laughed” medley, Benanti immediately milked the week-long frenzy over the Royal Wedding. In a separated-at-birth moment, she held a head-shot of Kate Middleton next to her face and insisted, “I am NOT married to Prince William,” then told about walking around her Manhattan neighborhood in an unglamorous sweat suit when a man asked if she was the future queen. Benanti’s conversational between-songs patter style makes it seem completely unscripted.

During a tribute to Stephen Sondheim—including a medley of “So Many People,” (Saturday Night) and two songs from Passion, followed by the entire “Steps of the Palace” from Into the Woods)—Benanti went into mini-standup comic mode, while also revealing her early passion for musical theater. When a young audience member tells Laura she is nine years old, Benanti responds, “When I was nine, I knew the entire score of Follies! I was a 45-year-old gay man in a little girl’s body. One day, when I was five, I cried on the school bus because the other kids didn’t know who Rosemary Clooney was.” Later when she tells of an injury suffered during her run in Gypsy (for which she won a Tony Award), she says,“I iced my vagina in Patti LuPone’s dressing room,” before feigning horror and asking, “Am I the first person to say ‘vagina’ at FeinSTEEN’s?”

Benanti may have the chops to be a TV sitcom star (she’d be ideal for a part on Glee), but it’s still her live singing that has made her an A-list musical theater pro. She displayed her beautiful soprano in a “When You Wish Upon a Star” tribute to her mom and mentor, Linda, her affinity for jazzy swing during “Alright, Okay, You Win” (her grandmother’s influence, she says), and her way with a heartfelt ballad like “Skylark” from the show Swing (her first Tony Award nomination). Her pianist, musical director and friend Mary-Mitchell Campbell (currently conducting The Addams Family) produced a wonderful swing arrangement on a mash-up of “If I Were a Bell” from Guys and Dolls with “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady.

After revealing that she always wanted to play a ukulele like Marilyn Monroe in the film Some Like It Hot, she produced the instrument and sang an adorable medley of “I Want to Be Loved By You” and The Beatles’ “Honey Pie.” For most performers, going from a sexy Betty Boop voice into the almost operatic balled “Unusual Way” from Nine might be an awkward transition, but it served to show off Benanti’s range and musical personality. She followed with a lovely medley of songs from Gypsy (“Some People”/“Small World”/“Together Wherever We Go,”) and then produced the showstopper of the evening, an extravaganza called “Inappropriate Medley.” No, she didn’t strip her way through the songs as if she were Gypsy Rose Lee, she manically mashed-up eight songs, including Beyoncé’s “All the Single Ladies” (“Put a Ring on It”), “Ol’ Man River,” Sonny & Cher’s signature song “I Got You Babe,” “Respect,” and Tina Turner’s version of “Proud Mary,” during which Campbell tossed her a tambourine.

Then came an incredibly poignant rendition of Harry Chapin’s “Mr. Tanner,” (about a novice singer from the sticks whose New York debut is panned in the press), a reverential yet cheeky “The Sound of Music” (during which Benanti posed hands on top of head a la Julie Andrews in the film), and Sondheim’s operatic “One More Kiss” from Follies. As her encore, Benanti cooed the delicious love song between Maria and Captain Von Trapp, and listening to it after taking in this totally entertaining show, I could only think that “somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done ‘Something Good.’”

Laura Benanti will appear again at Feinstein’s at the Loew’s Regency on May 22 at 8:30.

Stephen Hanks
Cabaret Scenes
May 1, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org