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Helane Blumfield
May 29, 2016
“Gender blending,” as Helane Blumfield described the premise of “Call Me H!,” her recent show at Don’t Tell Mama, is not the same thing as gender bending. Rather, Blumfield employed her set of 15 songs—all but one of them both written and sung by men—as a plea to be oneself from early childhood, regardless of conventional gender expectations. She got right into her tribute to the maile composers and performers who have inspired her with her opening number, Dar Williams’s “When I Was a Boy.” She quickly moved beyond being “not exactly a tomboy,” exploring some loftier possibilities of the opposite gender with “A Piece of Sky” (Michel Legrand, Marilyn & Alan Bergman). Amusingly, she claimed to have been “a feminist at the age of twelve,” and not the daughter, especially not the Jewish daughter, that either of her parents expected or wanted her to be. Cyndi Lauper’s “Not My Father’s Son” led into her narrative of life choices, such as being the best friend of a gay boy from grade school for 30 years until his death of AIDS, her becoming a deliberately single mother of a son, and entering into a later marriage.
Two of Blumfield’s most touching and effective selections were songs she’s danced to: “That’s Life” (Dean Kay, Kelly Gordon), the number for her father-daughter dance at her wedding; and “Moondance” (Van Morrison), the song of choice for dancing with her young son. She evoked laughter by channeling her brother, an otherwise conventional Jewish son who became a doctor, but who had one fatal flaw: his fascination with a “Shiksa Goddess” (Jason Robert Brown). Other selections, ranging from playful to portentous, advocating “a world without borders, a world without walls,” included “Father Figure” (George Michael) and “Man in the Mirror” (Glen Ballard, Siedah Garrett). A mash-up of “Take Me to Church” (Andrew Hozier-Byrne) and “Holly Holy” (Neil Diamond) was beautifully sung—with strong vocal help from musical director Bobby Peaco—but seemed a bit beside Blumfield’s point. She literally stumbled on Bruce Springsteen’s “The Streets of Philadelphia,” having to start it over at the performance I saw, which was her third show; the song may have worked as a tribute to her late friend, but didn’t really apply to her basic premise.
She returned to form with a song she described as “about myself”: Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman.” I could have done without her encore, “Sex Bomb” (Mousse T, Errol Rennalls), which she admitted was included just because she liked it. Peaco’s piano playing was admirable throughout the set, and Blumfield’s limited range was most effective in her lower register, a bonus to her premise. This show, directed by Helen Baldassare, still felt like a work in progress, particularly on the narrative, which at times came across as disjointed.
“Call Me H!”
Don’t Tell Mama – May 5,7,19
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.
“Gender blending,” as Helane Blumfield described the premise of “Call Me H!,” her recent show at Don’t Tell Mama, is not the same thing as gender bending. Rather, Blumfield employed her set of 15 songs—all but one of them both written and sung by men—as a plea to be oneself from early childhood, regardless of conventional gender expectations. She got right into her tribute to the maile composers and performers who have inspired her with her opening number, Dar Williams’s “When I Was a Boy.” She quickly moved beyond being “not exactly a tomboy,” exploring some loftier possibilities of the opposite gender with “A Piece of Sky” (Michel Legrand, Marilyn & Alan Bergman). Amusingly, she claimed to have been “a feminist at the age of twelve,” and not the daughter, especially not the Jewish daughter, that either of her parents expected or wanted her to be. Cyndi Lauper’s “Not My Father’s Son” led into her narrative of life choices, such as being the best friend of a gay boy from grade school for 30 years until his death of AIDS, her becoming a deliberately single mother of a son, and entering into a later marriage.