Varla Jean Merman
Big Black Hole
November 14 at 7 & 9:30 pm
The RRazz Room at the Prince
1412 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, PA
215.422.4580
Someone ought to wash out Miss Varla Jean Merman (Jeffrey Roberson)’s mouth with soap. Such nasty stuff! So many sexual innuendos! And how entertaining!
With her wigs piled high on her head and what seemed like a gazillion costume changes, she and Musical Director, Seth Rudetsky, took us on a tour of her weird take on the world, including constantly being confused with the singer Adele (or at least Adele’s grandmother!). She took on the Doris Day ditty “Que Sera, Sera” (Whatever Will Be, Will Be”) (Jay Livingston/Ray Evans) with her own risqué lyrics. In Merman’s version, when she asks her mother, “What I will be?,” her mom replies, “How the hell would I know?!”
Merman’s bizarre twist on the Kander and Ebb’s “Ring Them Bells” was to do it as Quasimodo, whom she portrayed as a lascivious hunchbacked sex fiend singing lyrics that couldn’t be repeated in a family publication. She touched on “La Vie en rose” which, somehow, in her logic, led to “Le Freak” (Bernard Edwards/Nile Rodgers). Her desperate need to “update” musicals resulted in an “adult” hip-hop version of “My Favorite Things,” which would have made Hammerstein blush. “Monday, Monday” (John Phillips) became an homage to mayonnaise, which she slurped greedily as she sang.
Her encore was a hilarious urban version of the Sesame Street song “Nouns,” which included words like: “ho,” “dumpster” and “fake credentials.”