Stacie Koby
Growing a Pair
The Duplex, NYC, June 6, 2018
Reviewed by Chris Struck for Cabaret Scenes
A journey to the stage often indicates a performer’s desire to overcome fear. And in life, there is always plenty that can bring fear back to the forefront of one’s mind.
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Usually, the best you can hope for is that the anxiety-inducing things come only once in a while and the panic button sits untested. However, Stacie Koby’s got plenty of the early parenthood drama and New York City jitters to share if you don’t have enough of your own paranoias.
Whether it is a marriage hampered by disappearing babysitters, kids who tackle their mom’s wits, or moving to suburbia, there is plenty that could shake away a false sense of security and, of course, as she put it, she has no shame in sharing. What Koby does well though is share and overcome self doubt through the process of (as she so gloriously with reenactments and everything puts it) “growing a pair.
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With a team of devoted friends including uber-talented and oft-comedic music director, Andrew David Sotomayor, drummer Bryan Garber, and cellist Jordan Jancz, Koby set out on that process by singing original songs, contemporary classics, and spoof-style lyrics. Her passionate displays of emotion, both tender and hostile, brought out layers of feeling in songs like Sara Bareilles’s “Uncharted,” and the much funnier “You Go First” (Adam Schlesinger/Jack Dolgen/Rachel Bloom). Even though it starts out, “Someone has to be bigger and apologize” and she admits, “it’s almost entirely my fault,” her delivery of the line, “but you go first” sucked us in. In fact, Koby used the same frighteningly good facial expressions to bring forth style in tandem with Sotomayor’s arrangements of songs like “The Facts of Life” (Gloria Loring/Alan Thicke/Al Burton).
Also joining Koby was another mom, Sarajean Davenport, to express the mutual frustration that goes with finding babysitters in New York with “Couldn’t Get a Sitter.” It’s all in good fun though, as was all of Koby’s show as she kept things fluid and light. Her stories kept us laughing and in high spirits, with jokes about the simple things like shopping for clothes—with one’s folks—as a grown woman. One thing is clear, she certainly doesn’t need to grow a pair if she has this much confidence already.
