Sharon McNight

Sophie Tucker’s Farewell Tour

Feinstein’s at the Nikko, San Francisco, CA, October 29, 2015

Reviewed by Steve Murray for Cabaret Scenes

If ever there were a tailor-made tribute show, Sharon McNight’s homage to the great Sophie Tucker ranks among the very finest. With her platinum hair, big belter delivery and brassy bravado, McNight uncannily channels the “Last of the Red Hot Mammas,” immersing herself in Tucker’s very spirit in this triumph of a performance.

The show is devised as a live Tucker performance complete with ribald stories, personal anecdotes and tributes to Sophie’s enduring legacy as one of the originators of the Great American Songbook. Through well-scripted dialogue, McNight takes us back into Tucker’s world – getting arrested for singing songs considered too risqué for contemporary early 1900 morals, her disastrous marriages and rubbing shoulders with the great composers and lyricists of her time.

Tucker, like McNight, was larger than life, exuding a brash confidence in her chosen profession balanced with a bittersweet desire for romantic love that seemed to elude her. Tucker introduced a treasure trove of songs into the American musical lexicon and McNight wisely chooses a selection of gems for this show. One of Tucker’s favorite songwriters was Jack Yellen, who did many of her specialty lyrics. She performs his bawdy “Hula Lou,” “I Don’t Want to Get Thin” and “Last of the Red Hot Mammas” (both collaborations with Milton Ager) and of course, “My Yiddishe Momme” (with Lew Pollack), the first million-selling record.

McNight tosses off Tucker one-liners with natural ease (“Beauty fades, but dumb is forever”; “From birth to age eighteen, a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five, she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on, she needs good cash.
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”) and easily switches between burlesque comedy—“I’m Living Alone and I Like It” (Dan Dougherty/Yellen) to poignant ballad—“It All Depends on You” (composed by Ray Henderson, with lyrics by Buddy G. DeSylva and Lew Brown), and a stunning “They’ll Be Some Changes Made”” (Billy Higgins / W.
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Benton Overstreet).

McNight, as Tucker, banters with Musical Director “Ted Shapiro” (played by pianist Billy Philadelphia) who accompanied Tucker all her life and addresses the audience members in ribald repartee. Closing with Cole Porter’s “Most Gentleman Don’t Like Love,” the Gershwins’ “The Man I Love” and Tucker’s signature, “Some of These Days,” McNight positively soars in this marvelously crafted biographical tour de force.