KT Sullivan & Jeff Harnar: Another Hundred People KT & Jeff Sing Sondheim: Act Two

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KT Sullivan & Jeff Harnar

Another Hundred People
KT & Jeff Sing Sondheim: Act Two

Laurie Beechman Theatre, NYC, July 15, 2015

Reviewed by Joel Benjamin for Cabaret Scenes

Photo: Russ Weatherford
Photo: Russ Weatherford

It’s amazing how one artist can infiltrate another’s psyche to the benefit of both. Somehow, in the songs of Stephen Sondheim, KT Sullivan and Jeff Harnar have found just the right combination of wit, emotion, musical acuity and subject matter that suits and challenges their particular talents. All three have come out better for their convergence.

Another Hundred People, the second of their Sondheim excursions, is richer than their first, as superb as that was. Here, Sondheim’s songs seem to illuminate their lives as well as letting them find more depth in their interpretations.

The program was divided into discrete combinations of songs dealing with similar themes. “Opening Doors” (Sullivan) and “Another Hundred People” (Harnar) looked from different angles at eager beginnings. Their upbeat “On My Left,” “Bounce,” “It Takes Two” and “Side by Side by Side” were about learning to depend on others in love and life, while the sardonic “Live Alone and Like It” plus “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” dealt with reasons for not depending on others in love and life.

These “messages” weren’t battered into us. Between the words and music of Sondheim and the wry, knowing performances of these two, the revelations came “on catlike paws,” the kind that reveal the deep-seated angst under the lovely calm.

Harnar’s “I Know Things Now” combined with “More” as a winking look back on innocence lost and pleasure—read “sex”—found. The hints of jazz that their musical director, Jon Weber, added to these songs brought out new colors in his voice. Sullivan has never been better than in the challenging quartet of “Waiting for the Girls Upstairs,” “Beautiful Girls,” “Color and Light” and a tour de force of “The God-Why-Don’t-You-Love-Me Blues.
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” She stripped herself of all show-bizzy glitz and got to the guts of the songs.

Their soft duets of “No One Is Alone,” “Take Me to the World” and “Our Time” were the pinnacle of mature interpretation.
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Weber’s solid accompaniment and arrangements and Sondra Lee’s direction made Another Hundred People a terrific, mature evening: the kind of perfect coming together of all elements that’s hard to come by, even in cabaret-saturated New York City.

KT & Jeff return to the Beechman July 29, August 18,19, 20, 21; September 8, 15, 22, October 12.
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All shows at 7 pm.

Joel Benjamin

A native New Yorker, Joel was always fascinated by musical theater. Luckily, he was able to be a part of seven Broadway musicals before the age of 14, quitting to pursue a pre-med degree, which led no where except back to performing in the guise of directing a touring ballet troupe. Always interested in writing, he wrote a short play in high school that was actually performed, leading to a hiatus of nearly 40 years before he returned to writing as a reviewer. Writing for Cabaret Scenes has kept him in touch with world filled with brilliance.