The Sensational Seven
Happy Birthday Dionne!
Phoenix Theatre Company, Phoenix, AZ, November 13, 2020
Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards
We Three, reviewed several times for Cabaret Scenes, has morphed into the Sensational Seven with the addition of four extremely talented musicians including vocalist Diana Lee, who not only has pipes to belt any Dionne Warwick song but also excels on the flute and harmonica.
The evening was full of hits written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who were responsible for the majority of Warwick’s 80 singles that made the Billboard charts throughout her career, which spanned 1955 to 1999. The title of the show derives from the celebration of her 80th birthday on December 12, 2020.
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Renee Patrick opened the show with a fairly tame disco version of “Déjà Vu” but built her energy and charisma with “Don’t Make Me Over,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” and the André and Dory Previn hit “Theme from Valley of the Dolls.” She especially shined on the sultry and soulful “What the World Needs Now” amidst colorful lighting effects. Patrick usually takes a side seat to pianist Nicole Pesce when performing as We Three, but she held her own alongside the larger, more dynamic Diana Lee, a veteran of the R&B group, Sister Sledge. Lee sounded like Warwick on her solos “Message to Michael,” and “I Say a Little Prayer.”
The show was at its best when the women brought their talents together in duet. This was most evident with the Bacharach/David “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” which won Warwick her first Grammy in 1969 for Best Female Pop Performance. But it was the 1998 salsa arrangement that Warwick recorded in collaboration with Celia Cruz and the Pete Escovedo Orchestra that made Happy Birthday Dionne sizzle. Patrick and Lee, decked out in sparkled gowns, came together in harmony and Suzanne Lansford and Pesce both took their own virtuosic solo turns. The four women also took similar melodic turns on the familiar “Walk on By.”
Pesce did take center stage mastering her two keyboards on a medley of her favorite Warwick hits, including “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” “Alfie,” “This Guy’s in Love with You,” and the title song from the Bacharach/David 1968 Broadway hit, Promises, Promises.
Drummer Greg Warner, the only musician on stage who had toured with Warwick, gave the band a short break and told a mildly entertaining personal story from his days on tour with the star in Australia.
The cabaret took the audience to Warwick’s love affair with Brazil with selections from her 1994 recording Aquarela do Brasil. Lee struck gold with “One-Note Samba” as she sang with the speed of lightning in both Portuguese (music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and lyrics by Newton Mendonca) and English (lyrics by Jon Hendricks). Musicians Mel Brown, Greg Warner, and Joe Garcia performed all evening like a well-honed machine, but they really had a chance to shine here.
Phoenix Theatre Company has invested significant resources into creating a safe and socially distant space for audiences to come together in a live outdoor arts experience. I can attest that their goals have been met. In these times we must mask up, have our temperatures taken upon entrance, take a cushion and blanket, and know how to scan a bar code to read the program or order any food and drink. (This reviewer is still working on how to scan with a cell phone.)
The newly built stage allows for projections, which could have been used better in this first show. The “scenery” was limited to Warwick’s various album covers corresponding to the song of the moment. I sorely missed the projection of Pesce’s hands as she flies across the keyboards, which is common on her zoomed Facebook cabarets.
Those on stage and in the audience had fun on the perfect closing number “That’s What Friends Are For.” Happy Birthday Dionne runs through November 22, 2020. Next up is UNWRAPPED: An Original Christmas Revue opening December 2, 2020.
