“Something familiar, something peculiar,
Something for everyone – cabaret tonight!”

With a Sondheim parody, KT Sullivan and Larry Woodard opened a four-night romp – one show each in June, July, August and September – offering  a panorama of music drawn from decades of theater, operetta, and the American and international songbooks. With Sullivan center stage – frisky, fun and in fine voice – and Woodard at the piano singing with her, the duo explored some two dozen songs – romance and comedy, light moods and darker ones – representing such writers as Bernstein, Berlin, Lehar, Loesser, Rodgers, Hammerstein, Kern, Trenet, Victor Herbert, Cole Porter and Antonio Carlos Jobim.

The June evening was particularly notable, not for the songs, but for the fact that it marked the first time in several years that these performers were on a cabaret stage as a team. Over many past years, they had created and performed shows in every major room in the city. Then, four years ago, Woodard developed health problems, underwent surgery, and stopped performing professionally.

Until Beechman. Three-quarters of the way into the show, Sullivan left the stage. Woodard took over, solo, starting with Don McLean’s “Vincent,” then Strouse/Adams’s “Night Song.” The audience, first respectfully quiet, leaned in to hear him, then, as he finished, burst into enthusiastic applause. He followed with two more solos: Porter’s “I’m a Gigolo” and Casucci/Brammer/Caesar’s “Just a Gigolo,” singing the latter partly in German. With each song and each phrase, his voice grew stronger, his performing more assured, his smile broader. When he finished, the room erupted in cheers of happiness for him. Larry Woodard was back.

Sullivan returned to the stage to join her performing partner in a few final numbers by Jobim, Porter, Romberg and Wilder. Their finale, heralding both the remainder of the Beechman Glamorous Summer Nights series and Larry Woodard’s return to performing: Noël Coward’s “I’ll See You Again.”

KT & Larry return to the Beechman July 24, August 22 and September 19, all shows at 7 pm.

Peter Haas
Cabaret Scenes
June 20, 2012
www.cabaretscenes.org