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“Champagne Pam is…’The Dog Walking Diva!’”
Don’t Tell Mama – April 13, 14, 15
Using a clever packaging strategy, Champagne Pam arrived onstage wearing a leopard-patterned jacket, accented with a flute of bubbly and a large, leopard-patterned bag. From the top of her act, she subliminally suggested the pampered, exotic feline, ready to tease and titillate legions of hot-and-bothered mutts.
It’s all part of a joke-persona, rooted in cultural contrasts. The Champagne Pam character is a haughty and sensual glamour-puss. But by day she toils as Pamela Lewis in the decidedly less-than-glamorous profession of pet care. Is there anything that could become a legend less than picking dog droppings off the sidewalk?
Her opening number, the bluesy “The Dog Song” aka “Walking My Dog” (Nellie McKay), established the persona and the tone of the program perfectly. Pam accented the song with small sexy squeals. At the end of the number, she opened her coat provocatively (revealing a leopard-patterned dress). She panted, paws up, like a begging puppy.
Many of the early songs in the show were variations on the sexy-diva-goes-to-the-dogs theme. Pam sounded like Lena Horne on Horne’s “I Want a Little Doggie,” and in other numbers she added breathy Marilyn Monroe touches. She pulled a couple of stuffed-toy pooches out of her bag and propped them up on the piano, singing to them coyly and seductively—at one point tugging on a tail.
It proved an amusing routine, but it began to seem routine by about the fourth selection. The theme became a burden. Nearly every song in the act was about dogs or was made to relate to dogs. Lyrics were changed to incorporate references to paws and leashes. The nadir for me was the transformation of “Just in Time” (Jule Styne, Betty Comden & Adolph Green) into a song about canine bladder distress, complete with pantomime. Pam’s between-song banter—about how she got into the dog-walking biz—was heavily scripted and often seemed stilted. Moments of spontaneous interaction with the audience were few, but they were welcome (as when a guy sitting near me offered to hold her coat and she admonished him not to walk off with it).
Fortunately, the singer found some variations at moments that broke the pattern and suggested that Pamela Lewis—the woman behind the diva—is capable of much fresher and truer things as a performer.
Her voice on a rollicking version of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Nice Work If You Can Get It” was smooth, clear, and showed considerable strength. In portions of the song she really cooked. True, she felt the need to end the song with another doggie bit: a couple of measures of scat singing resolved with a “bow-wow.” But the bit was expertly delivered, and the song landed nicely.
“Who Cares?” (also from the Gershwins) started as a languid Streisand-esque ballad (to the point where Pam enunciated the title as “Who Kehhhzz?”). The number accelerated to a finger-snapping pace in the second half, and the enthusiastic audience spontaneously joined in the snapping. “Wuh-wuh-wuh-why should I care?” Pam asked. Some embellishments on the melody line may have been derivative of other singers, but she hit her marks throughout.
For me the evening’s highlight was Alan Brandt and Bob Haymes’s “That’s All,” performed near the end of the set. This was delivered as a simple, heartfelt mash note. Pam wasn’t vamping for stuffed animals here. She was singing with genuine affection—both for her listeners and for the music itself.
The ending of the show came off as ragged. The business about acquiring a husband instead of a dog was introduced rather suddenly, and it seemed labored. (Lewis’s husband is talented guitarist John Hurley, who accompanied her onstage, along with the fine pianist Robert Lepley.) Pam pulled Hurley into her banter, and we got some business about his jealousy over all the dogs in her life. It felt forced and was not especially amusing.
Pam returned to Streisand-land for her encore, “Sweet Zoo” (Jeff Harris) from “My Name Is Barbra. This was an odd choice. The song does reference animals (e.g., a giraffe, a polar bear, and, finally, a bivalve mollusk), but at that late point—after the previously slavish adherence to the theme—there was nary a mention of dogs. Why the switcheroo? Further, the song invited comparisons with the original version, and Pam didn’t alter many of Streisand’s impish inflections. The end of the show should have placed Pam, not Barbra, front and center. Better, maybe, to have shuffled the song order and signed off with the lovely “That’s All.”
My advice to Pamela Lewis would be to change her leopard’s spots (or drop them altogether)—to embrace the idea of being Pamela Lewis, having faith that her own unadorned talent is all she really needs. It’s the opposite of the advice the veteran strippers offer Louise in the musical Gypsy.
Sometimes you’ve got to lose your gimmick if you want to get ahead.
Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing reviews for BistroAwards.com in 2011. More recently he has contributed "Cabaret Setlist" articles about cabaret repertoire. Other reviews and articles have appeared in theaterscene.net and clydefitchreport.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.
