It’s a cabaret with a boudoir feel, hosting the classic sounds of Cole Porter.
First the camera zooms in on the long-time host of this series, Scott Siegel, sporting a hipster of another time chapeau. He flits on and off camera just long enough to share spicing highlights of Cole Porter’s life--- Porter's in-the-closet gay identity, his older wife, a Harvard drop-out rebel who nonetheless got so much family fortune he was able to host all of his show collaborators on a four-month cruise during the height of the depression, and more. Siegel’s patter also brings us to the here and now, as he shares admiring details – ample-- of the cast’s Broadway pedigrees.
As talented as this cast is—and it is! – the spotlight remains on Cole Porter’s music. Some songs are shot in period black and white; each brims with story. A couple break out in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers moves. A soul songstress croons to her image in the mirror. One after another, we immerse in tunes that are at once from another time and timeless. You, like this reviewer, may find yourself enchanted by song and performance alike.
Cameras stay close on the performer’s faces—treating us to expression and feelings we might only get in the very front row center seats of an intimate soiree. Affect comes across like a gentle overflow into delicate tea cups--What Is This Thing Called Love? It Was Just One of Those Things! I Get a Kick Out of You—and more, nine songs en toto. How amazing to learn that Cole Porter took on the topic of lynching, almost cloaking it with a sound of Brit sophisticate-like phrasing!
Editor’s Note: See Program Below
We Hope The Town Hall Doesn’t Forget Its New National Audience
Sacrilegious as it may sound, this reviewer – so impressed by the production value of this short ~45-minute performance — can’t imagine how this series will make a comeback to live, because its pandemic-born filmed version of itself so thrills.
Town Hall and Scott Siegel--- Please keep sending these sentimental Broadway love letters out to us video-on-demand style.
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This stream is now concluded. The Town Hall soon presents two more BROADWAY BY THE YEAR cabarets—one on the Kander and Ebb years and one on Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. For more information visit The Town Hall website.
BROADWAY BY THE YEAR: THE COLE PORTER YEARS
Creator/Writer/Host: Scott Siegel
Video Director/Editor: JT Doran
Musical Director/Pianist: Ross Patterson
Songs/Shows/Performers (in show order):
1) You're The Top - Anything Goes (Danny Gardner & Emily Larger) - choreography by Danny Gardner
2) I Get a Kick Out of You - Anything Goes (Lilli Cooper)
3) What is This Thing Called Love? - Wake up and Dream (Kenita Miller)
4) Where is the Life That Late I Led -Kiss Me Kate (Alexander Gemignani)
5) It’s All Right With Me - Can-Can (Nicole Henry)
6)Miss Otis Regrets - High Diddle Diddle in London (Lilli Cooper)
7) Just One of Those Things - Jubilee (Kenita Miller)
8) Night and Day - The Gay Divorce (Danny Gardner w/Emily Larger) - choreograpy by Danny Gardner
9) So In Love -Kiss Me Kate (Alexander Gemignani)
Images courtesy of The Town Hall
