Dirty Little Ditties: Haunter

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Dirty Little Ditties

Haunter

Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, May 15, 2022

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

What do Fright Night II, The Lost Boys, and The Eyes of Laura Mars have in common? They were all horror films, and they all featured at least one song. So did Suspiria, Slumber Party Massacre II (which is a musical, believe it or not), and the infamous Lauren Bacall vehicle The Fan. All those tunes, and more, were presented by the Dirty Little Ditties team in their ninth incarnation in 10 years, Haunter, consisting of Miss Jane Aqualina, Miss Robusta Capp (aka Jovier Q. Sanchez), P. William Pinto, and Katie White.

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Assisted by music director/pianist Wendy Ip, the quartet offered up a celebration of camp and bad and good music. In fact, it was rather surprising how much good music came from bad movies.

For instance, the title song from Ruby (Don Dunn) was given a smoky blues delivery by Aqualina that showed off the material as a neglected gem. On the other hand, there was nothing the fabulous Capp could do to rescue the number by the biggest songwriter names in the show (Marvin Hamlisch and Tim Rice): “Hearts, Not Diamonds,” from the previously mentioned Bacall slasher film. She delivered it as pure drag-queen camp, which she did with great flair. Both performers, individually and in duets, charmed throughout the show with their powerhouse voices, their sense of humor, and their “fatography.”

York and White each contributed a few numbers, but it was Aqualina and Capp who dominated the show. The former offered a hypnotic version of a song from Don’t Look Now in Italian, and the two performed an unexpectedly romantic number from Carrie. The program climaxed with an unlikely elaborate extended musical scene from The Brave Little Toaster that mixed a degree of scariness, a lot of references to horror film icons such as Vincent Price, and a great deal of charm, as did like the entire show.

Bart Greenberg

Bart Greenberg first discovered cabaret a few weeks after arriving in New York City by seeing Julie Wilson and William Roy performing Stephen Sondheim and Cole Porter outdoors at Rockefeller Center. It was instant love for both Ms. Wilson and the art form. Some years later, he was given the opportunity to create his own series of cabaret shows while working at Tower Records. "Any Wednesday" was born, a weekly half-hour performance by a singer promoting a new CD release. Ann Hampton Callaway launched the series. When Tower shut down, Bart was lucky to move the program across the street to Barnes & Nobel, where it thrived under the generous support of the company. The series received both The MAC Board of Directors Award and The Bistro Award. Some of the performers who took part in "Any Wednesday" include Barbara Fasano and Eric Comstock, Tony Desare, Andrea Marcovicci, Carole Bufford, the Karens, Akers, Mason and Oberlin, and Julie Wilson. Privately, Greenberg is happily married to writer/photographer Mark Wallis, who as a performance artist in his native England gathered a major following as "I Am Cereal Killer."