Ken Haller
When I’m 66
The Blue Strawberry, St. Louis, MO, October 31, 2020
Reviewed by Chuck Lavazzi
The pandemic has all but shut down the local cabaret scene. The one exception has been Jim Dolan’s Blue Strawberry nightclub, although even there a “new normal” is very much in force with reduced capacity, mandatory masking, and other precautions, including (for some events) a reduced-price ticket for a live video stream of the evening’s show.
That, in fact, is how I saw the return engagement of Ken Haller’s 2019 show When I’m 65 on Halloween (which is also Mr. Haller’s birthday). Retitled When I’m 66, the new version is so nearly identical to the original that I’m going to refer you to my review of that one for the stuff that remained unchanged. One of those things that remained unchanged, happily, was the varied and neatly balanced song list, blended with just enough patter to let us know why the list made sense. Under the direction of Dolan the result, once again, was a perfect mix of the mirthful and the moving.
That said, there were some small differences this time around. To begin with, Nick Valdez replaced Haller’s original music director, Marty Fox. Last year I was impressed by the close rapport of the Haller/Fox team. I’m happy to say that I saw much the same close collaboration in the Haller/Valdez team-up.
There were also a few tweaks here and there in the patter and the song list. The most significant change was in the 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. The original set segued from William Finn’s “Heart and Music” (from A New Brain) into “I Could Write a Book” from Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart’s Pal Joey. It worked well enough, but this time it led instead to the Harold Arlen’/Yip Harburg “If I Only Had a Heart” (from The Wizard of Oz). It was a somewhat more powerful and risky choice, and it gave the set—already the emotional heart of the show—even more punch this time around.
Haller’s encore was the same as last year—James Taylor’s “Shower the People” done as a sing-along. But right now, in the middle of a pandemic and with a torrent of hatred pouring from the White House, the refrain feels even more urgent than it did a year ago:
“Shower the people you love with love
Show them the way you feel
Things are gonna be much better if you only will”
If we only could.
