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Bonnie Langford
December 23, 2010
“Bonnie Langford Spends Christmas in New York”
59E59 Theaters – December 14 to January 2, 2011
“Let Me Entertain You” was Bonnie Langford’s big number when she played Baby June in Gypsy (Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim) opposite Angela Lansbury. That was 35 years ago. She was ten years old, and considering her cabaret offering, Bonnie Langford Spends Christmas in New York, in the Brits Off Broadway Festival at 59E59 Theaters, being on stage and entertaining you is probably her driving force today.
A popular British musical theatre star, Bonnie Langford is a pert package of energy. In her current show, she skips around the show-biz story of her life, from age ten to the present, linking it all together with songs. She belts out a Gypsy medley, a medley of le jazz hot tunes from Kander & Ebb’s Chicago, pretzels herself into Fosse poses on the tiny stage, lithely does the splits, and kicks so high and straight she knocked herself in the head in the performance I attended. She includes some polished, amusing anecdotes like auditioning for the Metropolitan Opera singing “A Word on My Ear” (Michael Flanders/Donald Swann), demonstrating an impressive head voice for the song’s comical flat notes. (Her competition for the opera spot was Kiri Te Kanawa.) Recalling her days as one of Andrew Lloyd Webber and T.S. Eliot’s Cats, Langford talks about the first Grizabella (before Elaine Paige made her name as top cat), Dame Judi Dench, who ceded her role after an Achilles tendon accident. Langford offers a lot of dish, but it’s delicate dish and generously doled out with a wide smile indicating that she’s having a helluva good time.
While Langford started on Broadway at age ten, her career was mainly on the England stage. Today, she lives in New York with her family, which provides more fodder for patter as she shares expatriate problems with American regional accents. She has a keen ear for dialect, proven with Sweet Charity’s Bronx-speak in “If They Could See Me Now” and “I’m a Brass Band” (Cy Coleman/Dorothy Fields). Less satisfying is a forceful “Birth of the Blues” (Ray Henderson, B.G. de Silva and Lou Brown), but her vocal tone does not lend itself to a convincing blues sound. She is compelling, however, with her ballads, “Neverland” (Jule Styne/Comden & Green) from Peter Pan and “Growing Up Fast Isn’t Easy” (Charles Strouse/Don Black) from The Worst Witch.
While the evening is billed as a Christmas show, the only Christmas song—and it’s a good one—is Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane’s “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” Dispensing her versatile show-biz gifts, Bonnie Langford delivers a merry hour-plus of entertainment.
