Patricia Fitzpatrick and Bobby Wetherbee
Love Trumps Hate
Metropolitan Room, NYC, November 3, 2016
Reviewed by Randolph B. Eigenbrode for Cabaret Scenes
Patricia Fitzpatrick and Bobby Wetherbee’s newest show is Love Trumps Hate. They should consider abridging its title to the more simple Love as, after a breezy 75 minutes, that’s what the audience is filled with.
The piece, a reminiscing jaunt through Fitzpatrick’s personal recollections of U.S. presidents over the last 50 or so years, doesn’t seem to be the most engaging idea on paper, but, once in the hands of this duo, engaging is an understatement. Fitzpatrick is a stylish woman with a simple alto and a perennially naughty glint in her eye. Deliberate and understated in her storytelling, she finds humor in all the right places—especially in “Old Cape Cod” (Claire Rothrock/Milton Yakus/Allan Jeffrey), a love letter to the JFK years.
Wetherbee, the winner of the 2016 Cabaret Lifetime Achievement Award, presented at Provincetown’s CabaretFest this past June, is infectiously charming with an impish smile, quick wit and a superb knack for keeping a show moving along. Self-accompanying with two supreme hands, he favors the lingering chord pound in a style that lives between Saloon and Dixieland. And they are so gloriously in sync with each other, picking up missed cues and finishing each other’s sentences. And when that harmony is applied to a brand of material that lends itself to sing-along, the room responds in spades.
Fitzpatrick shines throughout, but an Obama tribute, “At Last” (Mack Gordon/Harry Warren), is particularly effective in allowing her to take a break from being a raconteur to live in her affection. Wetherbee, in a show-stopping moment, brings the show to a screeching halt to deliver “I Believe in Love” (Roger Cook/Sam Hogin)—the sober message of the evening.
And it’s this love that makes one fall so quickly for this enchanting pair. And, really, isn’t that what the world needs now?