Saturday Night Fever Reunion Concert
54Below, NYC, August 31, 2015
Reviewed by Annamaria Alfieri for Cabaret Scenes
This concert performance brought together some young performers and a few from the original cast of the Broadway musical taken from the iconic film. All the Bee Gees’ hit numbers from the movie soundtrack were included: “Stayin’ Alive,” “Boogie Shoes,” “If I Can’t Have You,” “Jive Talkin,” and “How Deep Is Your Love.” Some of these were graced with spectacular dance performances by Michelle Marmolejo and Nick Kenkel to Kenkel’s choreography.
The songs written for the original Broadway production and some of those very recently added carried real emotional heft. The young cast set the scene with interspersed dialogue. Shannon O’Boyle stood out, both in her acting and her singing, especially with “Stuck,” baring all the longing, nay desperation, of working class aspirations and paucity of hope so brilliantly communicated in the film. Not all the men looked the part—in fact, many of them looked more like candidates to play Father Frank than Tony, Bobby, or Gus. But Pat McRoberts brought Monty fully to life, with great dramatic skills, looking and sounding one hundred percent the denizen of Bay Ridge in “More Than a Woman.”
The original cast veterans—Paige Price (Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Beauty & The Beast), Paul Castree (9 to 5, Young Frankenstein, High Fidelity), James Carpinello (Rock of Ages, Xanadu), and Orfeh (Legally Blonde, Footloose)—all showed their well-honed stage skills, with Castree taking a genuine star turn, performing an original Broadway production number, “Tragedy.”
