Elizabeth Inghram & Joanna Parson
Not Helpful: Pretty Songs and Feminine Harms
Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, July 7, 2019
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg for Cabaret Scenes
& Joanna Parson
A delightful exploration of the quite awful portrayals of women in pop culture, done with humor rather than venom and mixed with a fabulous theatrical sensibility, Not Helpful allowed Elizabeth Inghram and Joanna Parson to display their wide range of talents. Beginning with the operetta-ish “We Are Women” from Candide, with vocals equal to the material, the duo made clear this would not be your standard song list. One of the wise choices made was that, for the most part, they let the material speak for itself without adding comment, so that Inghram’s stage worthy “Happy to Keep His Dinner Warm” and Parson’s swinging “Love Isn’t Born, It’s Made” illustrate their point of view. Of course, they do have some fun with some of their standards, such as “Fever,” sung as written but with the addition of band-aids, a blood pressure arm-band, and ice packs worn like hats leading to musical-comedy madness.
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Occasionally, they and their band pushed a bit too much, but this needs only minor adjustments to fix.
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Wisely chosen audio clips were interspersed in the show to emphasis their points, such as the infamous Geritol ad—“She’s my wife, I think I’ll keep her”—along with cat fights from Dynasty and Mean Girls. Another major contribution to the show was made by music director Kyle Branzel who created several terrific medleys that juxtaposed and blended songs dealing, separately, with “Lonely Ladies,” complete with a dandy dance-band arrangement of “If Love Were All,” a mash up of “On My Own” and “I’m Not That Girl,” and a second on “Bitches,” which had a more contemporary sound with “You Oughta Know” (Alanis Morrissette and Glen Ballard) and “Bitch” (Shelly Peikin and Meredith Brooks).
Also contributing to the fun were bassist Sam McPherson, drummer Mary Rodriguez, and choreographer Lena Gilbert.
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But it was Inghram and Parson who lit up the stage with the perfect wrap-up for the evening—“The Lady Is a Tramp” (including a cleverly inserted salute to Rodgers and Hart).
