Francesca Amari

November 23, 2015

Francesca AmariCertainly deserved and heartfelt, Francesca Amari’s recent tribute to Gilda Radner, at the Metropolitan Room, too often suffered from a feeling of being once removed from its subject. While Amari and Radner were both from Michigan, they grew up some 200 miles and a generation apart—and never met. Right off the bat, Amari allowed that she’s no comedian. She soon proved she is a singer, and a good one. But although Radner was schooled in dance and music—and sometimes evidenced those talents, most often for comic effect—she was far and away best known for being brilliantly funny. Her widest audience came during the first five years of “Saturday Night Live” (1975-1980).Thanks mostly to frequently aired SNL compilation programs, more recent television viewers have come to know and love Radner’s indelible “Weekend Update” commentators: the deaf and malapropism-prone Emily Litella; the wild-haired, Korvette-shopping Rosanne Roseannadanna; and of course the borderline-cruel imitation of “Baba Wawa.” Among Radner’s enduring sketch characters finding new fans has been her nerdy teen, Lisa Loopner, opposite Bill Murray’s Todd (“Pizza Face”), her noogie-delivering boyfriend.

Amari’s show began well enough, with her singing “You Make Me Laugh” (Shelly Markham, Tom Toce), a charmingly upbeat love song that also gave the evening its title. Markham was the original musical director for this show, but was unavailable to play it in New York, so Alex Rybeck ably substituted as sole accompanist. Rybeck also contributed the music for an apt number later in the presentation, “What a Funny Boy He Is” (lyric by Michael Stewart). Less apt was Amari’s second song, “Comedy Tonight” (Stephen Sondheim, from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum). Contrary to the lyrics, “weighty affairs” did not “have to wait,” nor should they have: In her connective talk, Amari dealt with Radner’s childhood obesity, anorexia and bulimia; the death of her adored father, when she was only twelve; her sometimes rocky love life; and the struggle with ovarian cancer that caused her death at age 42. Much of the narrative content came from Radner’s autobiography, “It’s Always Something.”

A more problematic musical outlier was “Put the Blame on Mame” (Doris Fisher, Allan Roberts). Yes, it’s from Gilda, the 1946 movie starring Rita Hayworth as the title character, and, yes, Radner was born in 1946, and her mother named her daughter Gilda because she liked the movie so much. But all of this we find out only after Amari has sung the song. Even if the song had been truly relevant, the setup should always come before the punchline. Too many other numbers in the act were almost generic memory/love songs and certainly have been long overdone in cabaret acts: “The Way We Were” (Marvin Hamlisch, Alan & Marilyn Bergman), “Two for the Road” (Henry Mancini, Leslie Bricusse), and “With a Little Help from My Friends” (Lennon & McCartney) have been club staples since they were written in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

“Bring On the Rain” (Billy Montana, Helen Darling) effectively set up the evening’s downer dénouement, and a brief reprise of “You Make Me Laugh” reminded one of the tribute show that might have been. The two songs that Radner herself actually introduced, in her 1979 stage show at the Winter Garden Theatre, Gilda Radner – Live from New York, were a bit off-putting. “Honey (Touch Me with My Clothes On),” which she wrote with Paul Shaffer, was only mildly salacious. But the second Radner song, and Amari’s encore (!), was “Let’s Talk Dirty to the Animals” (Michael O’Donaghue), and it was all-out vulgar. Yet it wasn’t even the most tasteless portion of the evening. Despite her admitted lack of comedic chops, Amari inexplicably decided to deliver an updated version of an Emily Litella linguistic rant, rather than recreate a Radner original. In this ill-considered (and unfunny) verbal confusion, Emily, at some length, confuses “Ices” with “ISIS.”

It’s hard to know where to lay blame for these artistic lapses, as Amari credited four members of her creative team, in addition to Markham. Although no one was cited as director, Andrea Marcovicci was listed as “creative consultant,” Clifford Bell as both “producer” and “co-pilot,” and Shelly Goldstein and Robert Julian for “special material.”

“You Make Me Laugh: A Love Song to Gilda Radner”
Metropolitan Room  –  October 11, 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.