bwaybabe2,
I did go to the NJ concert, but got there really late because of awful awful awful traffic. I was so bummed. It was May 3 at the State Theatre in New Brunswick. I only got to see a few numbers - a trio of Circle of Life from Lion King, Rachel singing Defying Gravity (OMG!), Christiane Noll and Aaron singing Phantom, and Aaron singing Music of the Night. Whew! According to the program, I missed Rachel and Christiane singing All That Jazz and a couple of other duets I can't remember. It was only an hour, so I missed about half of it. Marvin Hamlisch was really funny. Toward the end a NJ State student choral group sang, and there were only three or four boys in the entire group. Marvin joked with them about being surrounded by older, taller girls, and one of the boys joked right back saying that the only reason he was still able to be in the chorus was that he hadn't hit puberty yet and his voice hadn't changed!
Fortunately, I made a weekend of it and also saw Rachel's cabaret at the Metropolitan Room the next night. Gotta take advantage of her trips to the East Coast.
She was fabulous. Here's her song list: Don't Rain on My Parade (amazing belt on "I'll march my band out" that got the audience applauding), Lost and Found (very sexy and cute), Blue Lou (an Ella Fitzgerald scat song she used for her City of Angels audition), I Dreamed a Dream (tears running down her cheeks by the end), Losing Track of Time from Summer of '42, Fly Me to the Moon from her CD, Mercy on Me (a Christina Aguilera gospel-style blues song), I Want You to Be (a really funny riff on marriage), a Burt Bacharach medley (she did a hilarious Cher impression during the I'll Never Fall in Love Again section, then ended with a soaring What the World Needs Now Is Love), and Maybe This Time as a tribute to Liza. Encores were Back to Before (Lynn Ahrens was in the audience and Rachel gave her a nice nod about the brilliance of Ragtime), and How Do You Keep the Music Playing. It's so great seeing the variety Rachel can handle, and her stories are really fun, too. She talks about how she met her boyfriend during Summer of '42 (very romantic), and she tells a story about Liza filling in for Julie during Victor/Victoria. She does impressions of Julie, Liza, Tony Roberts and herself as Norma. Too much!
We don't see enough of her as far as I'm concerned.
lc