Ken Haller
When I’m 65
Blue Strawberry, St. Louis, MO, November 21, 2019
Reviewed by Chuck Lavazzi
The St. Louis cabaret scene has really taken off over the past 15 years or so, and local performers are increasingly showing up at prime nightspots such as Davenport’s in Chicago and Don’t Tell Mama in New York City. One of the most prolific of those performers has been singer/actor/pediatrician Ken Haller. His latest show, When I’m 65, demonstrated why that’s the case.
Presented at local impresario Jim Dolan’s Blue Strawberry nightclub, When I’m 65 was classic Ken, with a varied and neatly balanced song list, just enough patter to let us know why the list made sense, and a perfect mix of the mirthful and the moving. Indeed, Dr. Haller and his music director Marty Fox managed the ingenious trick of putting together an evening that dealt with the experience of joining the Medicare Generation without using a lot of songs that specifically dealt with aging.
So, while the show opened with “When I’m 65” (a clever partial rewrite of the Beatles classic “When I’m 64”), that number allowed Haller (I’m dropping the “Doctor” from here on out, if we’re all OK with that) to segue into the Jerome Kern/Johnny Mercer classic “I’m Old Fashioned” which led to reflections on his love of the Great American Songbook and memories of how he listened to many of those memorable tunes on the black-and-white TV in the family living room.
That, in turn, moved logically into a medley of two Mercer standards that emerged from that tinny speaker all those years ago: “Dream” (as recorded by Ella Fitzgerald on the 1964 Johnny Mercer Songbook LP) and “Moon River” (music: Henry Mancini from the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s). Haller and Fox gave the latter a bit of medium-tempo swing that made it feel less cloyingly sentimental than it sometimes does—a pleasant surprise and just one of many in the evening.
If you’ve seen a Ken Haller show before, you know there’s always going to be a heaping helping of humor, and this show was no exception. That included a wry take on Lerner and Loewe’s “I’m Glad I’m Not Young Anymore” (from Gigi), a version of “Rock Island” (from The Music Man) done as a rap number (which it sort of is anyway), complete with baseball cap and cheesy “bling,” and Michael Kooman and Christopher Dimond’s outrageous stalker parody “To Excess.”
That last one was something of a risky choice, since it’s usually sung by a young man to the unseen woman with whom he is obsessed. Performed by an older singer, it runs the risk of coming off as more creepy than funny, but Haller made it work and the crowd loved it.
It came at an ideal point in the evening as well, providing a necessary bit of comic relief after a moving and powerful segment on love and loss built around Haller’s reminiscences of the first great love of his life, Bob Corsico, and the lessons he took from that relationship. Beginning with a beautiful duet version with Fox of William Finn’s “Heart and Music” (from A New Brain) and culminating in a performance of “The Man That Got Away” that turned that classic torch song into a declaration of emotional independence, this was the strong emotional heart of the show.
Since this was a Ken Haller show, there was a Sondheim song‚ in this case, a very appropriate one: a celebratory rendition of “I’m Still Here” (from Follies) with the original lyrics.
I’m not normally a big fan of cabaret shows that rely heavily on the personal lives of the performers, but When I’m 65 was just intimate enough to be emotionally compelling without ever descending into self-referential navel gazing. Fox’s original and inventive arrangements were a big plus as well, as was the obvious close rapport between him and Haller. Well done, gentlemen.
This was my first opportunity to see a show at the Blue Strawberry, which opened on October 31st. It boasts clean sightlines, excellent sound, and a small but very well-balanced food-and-drink menu. It’s a welcome addition to the local scene to say the least. There are shows most Wednesdays through Sundays; information is available at www.bluestrawberrystl.com.
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