Anita Gillette

December 12, 2013

Anita GilletteShe has been in show business for 55 years, but made her cabaret debut (with this show) only last year. Yet it seems as if Anita Gillette has been preparing for this act her entire professional life. The result is a seamless, exuberant, humorous, and touching look back at her biography that also provides a master class in fashioning an intimate 80-minute set. Gillette gets a huge assist from director Barry Kleinbort (who also contributed some special lyrics) and strong, empathetic support from her musicians: music director Paul Greenwood on piano and backup vocals; Steve Bartosik on drums; and Steve Doyle on bass. But it’s mostly Gillette’s own somewhat quirky resume and how she’s chosen to present it that makes her set so satisfying. Embracing her age, longevity, and body of work, at times she is singing songs that only make sense coming from her.

As a child in Baltimore, she wanted to be Jeanette MacDonald and The Andrews Sisters. “If you don’t know who they were, you’re riding in the wrong car,” she warns her audience. Opening night, at least, everyone was of an age and very much in the right car. Gillette pairs unlikely songs in tribute to her two idols: “Italian Street Song” (Victor Herbert, Rida Johnson Young) and “Cuanto Le Gusta” (Gabriel Ruiz, Ray Gilbert, from the movie A Date with Judy, in which the sisters backed up Carmen Miranda). Where else can you get this stuff? And it gets even better. Gillette began her career as a chorus member understudying Dainty June in the original production of Gypsy. Faced with firing when she became pregnant, she found a firm ally in Ethel Merman, who declared, “The kid stays in.” And so she did, until her eighth month—and for thirteen more Broadway shows.

Here, “Extra, Extra” (Jule Styne, Stephen Sondheim) harks back to her debut role. The Main Stem roles she originated, some of them in what became famous flops, contribute unique numbers to her set list. From Kelly, which opened and closed the same night, she sings 16 bars of the opening number, “Ode to a Bridge” (Moose Charlap, Eddie Lawrence). She rightly gives the same 16-bar short shrift to “I Lost the Love of Anatole” (Arthur Schwartz, Howard Dietz), from The Gay Life, a show from which her role was cut in its pre-Broadway tour. From roles she originated in shows than ran longer than Kelly but are largely now forgotten, Gillette resurrects “Nightlife” (Charles Strouse, Lee Adams, from All-American); “The Secret Service Makes Me Nervous” (Irving Berlin, from Mr. President, in which she played the title character’s daughter); and “Oh, Gee!” (Bill Jacob, Patti Jacob, from Jimmy). She sings them all as if they were the heartfelt standards they are not.

When she sings songs from shows in which she replaced an original star, her selections are as welcome as they might be unexpected. From Cabaret, she does “Don’t Tell Mama” (Kander & Ebb). From Carnival, she offers a sweet tribute to the town of “Mira” (Bob Merrill). And from They’re Playing Our Song, she sums up with “I Still Believe in Love” (Marvin Hamlisch, Carole Bayer Sager). Other, non-show standards she sings were come by honestly. Her medley of “How Deep is the Ocean?” and “Remember” (Irving Berlin) is performed in tribute to the close friendship she forged with the songwriter during Mr. President. “Yesterdays” (Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach, from Roberta) she sang at Harbach’s funeral. Her finale, “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” (DeSylva, Brown & Henderson, from George White’s Scandals), perfectly sums up Gillette’s philosophy and the tone of show.

Middle-aged audiences may remember Anita Gillette as a frequent TV game show and Johnny Carson guest in the 1980s. More-current audiences may know her only as the movie and television mother supreme: of Tina Fey on 30 Rock; of Jennifer Anniston in She’s the One; of Jack Black in Bob Roberts; and of Bill Murray in Larger Than Life. All audiences should now partake of the whole petite but powerful package.

 

“After All”

Metropolitan Room – December 9, 10, 16, 17

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About the Author

Robert Windeler is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Mary Pickford, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, and Burt Lancaster. As a West Coast correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine, he covered movies, television and music, and he was an arts and entertainment critic for National Public Radio. He has contributed to a variety of other publications, including TV Guide, Architectural Digest, The Sondheim Review, and People, for which he wrote 35 cover stories. He is a graduate of Duke University in English literature and holds a masters in journalism from Columbia, where he studied critical writing with Judith Crist. He has been a theatre critic for Back Stage since 1999, writes reviews for BistroAwards.com, and is a member of The Players and the American Theatre Critics Association.