Christine Ebersole: After the Ball

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Christine Ebersole

After the Ball

Café Carlyle, NYC, October 11, 2016

Reviewed by Elizabeth Ahlfors for Cabaret Scenes

Christine-Ebersole-54Below-Cabaret-Scenes-Magazine_212Christine Ebersole, a savvy, stunning soprano, strolls down memory lane at the Café Carlyle, opening with Charles K. Harris’ wistful 1891 waltz, “After the Ball.” It’s welcome back time to the Carlyle for two-time Tony Award winner and new empty-nester Ebersole, who recently appeared with Patti LuPone in Chicago’s Goodman Theatre production of War Paint. 

In her new cabaret show, she sets a melodic theme about remembering and gratitude, acknowledging her family and her life through a selection of the best in the American Songbook with the jazzy, melodic and witty style we’ve learned to expect from her. Interspersing anecdotes—witty, sentimental and mischievous—she sets up songs about the ongoing passage of life. 

Ebersole is a spellbinding vocalist/actress who has it all together, refreshing her interpretations with jazz and emotion, adding colors and layers to her theater, cabaret and jazz performances.

Following a shimmering “The Way You Look Tonight” (Dorothy Fields/Jerome Kern),  Ebersole muses about “nearing dotage,” shrewdly moving on to Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley’s “Look at That Face” and boosting the comedy with “What Did You Do to Your Face?

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.” This Susan Werner song hilariously talks about running into an old friend who had some cosmetic work done  (“What’s with your eyes?/You look like everything’s a total surprise”). Incidentally, this does not apply to 63-year-old Ebersole, stunning in a simple black dress on opening night.

Musical Director/pianist Lawrence Yurman, Larry Saltzman on guitar and banjo, Mairi Dorman-Phaneuf on cello made up her trio of top accompanists who add subtle transformations to up the varied moods and rhythms of her selections.

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She skips around the decades, but links them to her life, remembering “Yesterdays” (Otto Harbach/Jerome Kern) and “Lazy Afternoon” (John Latouche/Jerome Morross) and the wildly wonderful 1930 Walter Donaldson/Gus Kahn evergreen, “My Baby Just Cares for Me.” Remembering the nights when she would leave home to go to the theater, she breaks into vaudevillian mode belting a Al Jolson-hearty “Toot, Toot Tootsie! (Goo’bye),” (Gus Kahn/Ernie Erdman/Dan Russo) with all the bells and whistles and kazoos. For her husband, she dedicated a slightly deconstructed renditions of  George and Ira Gershwin’s “‘S Wonderful.”

Speaking to the birth mothers of her three adopted children, Ebersole delivered a touching medley of Joni Mitchell’s “Little Green” and “Wait Till You See Her” by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. In the same meditative mood she delivered a lovely “Inchworm” by Frank Loesser and exquisite renditions of “Autumn Leaves” (Jacques Prévert/Joseph Kosma/Johnny Mercer) and Billy Barnes’ “(Have I Stayed) Too Long at the Fair.
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A sublime closing to the show was “When I Grow Too Old to Dream” (Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein II). Five years was too long for the superlative talents of Christine Ebersole to be away from this special cabaret stage.
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Elizabeth Ahlfors

Born and raised in New York, Elizabeth graduated from NYU with a degree in Journalism. She has lived in various cities and countries and now is back in NYC. She has written magazine articles and published three books: A Housewife’s Guide to Women’s Liberation, Twelve American Women, and Heroines of ’76 (for children). A great love was always music and theater—in the audience, not performing. A Philadelphia correspondent for Theatre.com and InTheatre Magazine, she has reviewed theater and cabaret for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia City News. She writes for Cabaret Scenes and other cabaret/theater sites. She is a judge for Nightlife Awards and a voting member of Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle.