k.d. Lang in After Midnight- Page 3

[Patash]

Posted: 2/14/14 at 10:12am

OK. After Midnight with Fantasia was probably my favorite musical of the season so far, and I have tickets to see it again with k.d. at this Sunday's matinee. It will be our first anniversary and I really wanted my husband to see this show. (I saw it alone first time around).

So the speculation earlier in this thread that each guest star would do different songs was totally wrong. While I loved Fantasia's versions, I can't wait to see what will obviously be a whole different take on them. And like I predicted way back when, k.d. will appear in tuxedo.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 9:54am

She appears in two tuxedos, actually--a black one and a white one. She looks terrific, and her customary gender-bending takes on an additional meaning as she is the only white performer in a black cast in a show set in an imaginary 1930s Harlem of speakeasies and nightclubs.

Her look recalls the great Gladys Bentley, a similarly gender-bending blues singer of the Harlem Renaissance who sang at a gay speakeasy called Harry Hansberry's Clam House on 133rd Street.




Here is Gladys (in a dress!) in the 1950s as a guest on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life television show:


http://youtu.be/j-LTJNasTMc


kd doesn't sing anything like Gladys. kd sings like kd. But she does the same four sings that Fantasia did--in the same arrangements, and her "Stormy Weather " and "Sunny Side of the Street" are extraordinary. (She even does a sweet bit of dancing with one of the female dancers.)

But the interplay between her and the cast during "Zaz Zuh Zaz" is where her appearance in the show comes thrillingly to life. Her scat singing is up there with the best, she channels bits and pieces of Cab Calloway's antic spirit, and she creates a convincing character of a fictional boundary-pushing gender-bending white lesbian singer who finds herself in a Harlem nightclub somehow fitting in. It's exhilarating.

And she even does a surprisingly girlish scat bit in the middle that is very funny. Who knew she could be funny being femme?

It's an amazing show and she is an amazing addition to it.

GO!

Updated On: 2/15/14 at 09:54 AM

[HorseTears]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 11:11am

PalJoey - I've said it before, but I'll say it again, please don't ever leave! The historical context you add to countless threads on this board deeply enriches the discussions. I have a pretty good knowledge of artists of the era After Midnight celebrates, but I had never even heard of Gladys Bentley. That clip of her with Groucho was great.

So glad to hear how well k.d. lang's fitting in, too. Just out of curiosity, any impressions of the audience in terms of how full the house was, audience demos, their reception etc? I don't know why, but I get the impression that even though the reviews are almost universally raves, this show's going to need strong word of mouth to have a healthy run.

Speaking of reviews, Jesse Green of NY Magazine/Vulture went back to review the show again with k.d. lang and it's pretty much a total rave from him again:

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Theater Review: A Second Turn After Midnight With k.d. lang
By Jesse Green

I worried when it was announced that k.d. lang, the anti-capitalist chanteuse, would be replacing Fantasia Barrino in After Midnight — a revue I found just about perfect when it opened in November. Not that it seemed likely the producers of such a delicious and tasteful production, celebrating the music and dance styles of the Cotton Club during its heyday, would rotate hordes of has-beens and never-weres into the guest-star role. I wasn’t actually expecting to see, say, Carrot Top, and then Joe Biden. Still, worse has happened on Broadway — I’m looking at you, Chicago. And it wasn’t clear how lang’s demeanor and voice would suit the material, or how lang herself, now 52, would be suited.

Not, surely, in Fantasia’s stunning cut-to-there gowns by Isabel Toledo!
I should have been more trusting. First, since everyone wants to know, lang wears various menswear pieces — a dark three-piece suit, gleaming white tails — nicely cut to her frame. She looks a bit like a bachelor-uncle insurance salesman at a holiday dinner dance in Hartford. You like her at once, but don’t feel you’ll get to know her. And though she’s not exactly “of” the piece as Fantasia was, in part because she’s white and the rest of the cast is black, she makes that slight sense of separateness work. You root for her in a way Fantasia, so soignée and poised, never asked for or needed.

And then the insurance salesman opens her mouth and doesn’t need your support anyway. She sings the same four songs (“I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” “Stormy Weather,” “Zah Zuh Zaz,” and “On the Sunny Side of the Street”) in what, as far as I could tell, were the same arrangements. The only change I noticed in the staging was that the backup dancers for “On the Sunny Side of the Street” were women instead of men — and she got to do a charming little ballroom turn with one of them.
Yet she was superb. The years have done nothing to curdle that ultracreamy voice, with its sweet upper register and socko chest tones. Her perfect breath control intact, her pitch rock-solid, she took an almost classical approach to living within the world of each song. Teasing, tragic, mocking, sunny, and variously concentrated tinctures thereof: She hit them all, and the big notes, too.

But never too big. One of the things I noticed again at After Midnight is the way the stupendous musical arrangements, by Duke Ellington and others, require and model a certain level of restraint; there are no overdramatic closing cadences or applause-begging stingers. The show (save for some undisciplined byplay creeping in) follows suit, abjuring American Idol–ish vocalization while keeping a lively balance in its acts between specialties, oddities, and (for lack of a better word) standards. I highlighted a few of these last time; this time I’ll point out the variety and wit of Toledo’s costumes (gotta love Karine Plantadit in death’s-head paillettes) and the gorgeous mouth of Carmen Ruby Floyd. (What comes out of it in “Creole Love Song” isn’t shabby either.) I’m sure if I go back after lang leaves the show on March 9 (pending an extension) there will be other such pleasures to highlight as well. Whether they will include the new guest-star stylings of “Babyface” Edmonds and Toni Braxton, starting March 18 — well, I’m worried.

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NY MAG - REVIEW - A Second Turn After Midnight With k.d. lang Updated On: 2/15/14 at 11:11 AM

[WiCkEDrOcKS]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 12:49pm

NY Post gives it a four-star rave, saying it's even better now: http://nypost.com/2014/02/14/k-d-lang-adds-saucy-gender-bending-twist-to-after-midnight/

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/15/14 at 2:01pm

The house was full. It was up on the tkts board and we got our tcikets from the wonderful new iPhone app called "TodayTix"--they offer discounts you can't find on BroadwayBox, you pay on your phone by credit card and the tickets are either waiting at the box office or a TodayTix "concierge" in a red t-shirt meets you in front of the theater 1/2 hour before show with your tickets.

We were mid-orchestra on the side, and the orchestra was full. I don't know about the mezzanine.

[Wee Thomas2]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 11:29am

We were there for the Sunday matinee -- got Playbill (or was it theatermania?) discount at the box office the day before. All the prior comments stand -- kd was wonderful and fit in very well with the show.

I though Dule Hill wasn't needed (I love him in Psych, but he didn't do much here) and there were three "showgirls" who didn't do much. But everyone else was terrific, especially the band. Would have liked the drummer to get a solo, but no dice.

[Patash]

Posted: 2/18/14 at 5:12pm

I saw Sunday's matinee too. I'm hard pressed to say which I liked better, Fantasia or k.d. -- they are so completely different it's hard to make a comparison. Both were great, but I do have to say that because of the total difference in style, k.d.'s performance makes a lot of sense as a "guest star", something I was having a hard time trying to figure out a couple months ago. Fantasia was very much what one would expect for the Cotton Club -- very reminiscent of Nell Carter, for example. But k.d.'s smooth as silk crooning was just a whole different direction and very much "unexpected" at least by me-- skin color aside.