Donna Vivino: Confessions of a Broadway Baby

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Donna Vivino

Confessions of a Broadway Baby

The Green Room 42, NYC, June 24, 2022

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

Donna Vivino

Donna Vivino broke into show biz as a miniature Ethel Merman, blasting out a song on television clad as a reduced Statue of Liberty. Some years later (she invited the audience to do the math), she took to the stage of The Green Room 42 to prove she’s still the same fabulous musical-comedy artist. With a powerful voice that seems to have no break as it sails up and down the scale, a warm personality that immediately connects with the audience, and a free-wheeling sense of humor that finds comedy in the frustrations and the triumphs of her life, she clearly brings all of her stage experience into putting on one delightful show.

Most of her material was drawn from Broadway, both standards and specialty numbers. They were all delivered using her own voice and from her own point of view. For instance, “Don’t Rain on My Parade” was delivered with passion and solid vocalizing, without a trace of Barbra. The over-performed “Tomorrow,” which she used as her audition song for Rags (she lost the role to someone currently in the theatrical news), was given power via its complete lack of sentimentality. This was followed by her audition song for Les Misérables, a version of “Rainbow Connection” that emphasized the lovely waltz melody and was played beautifully by music director/pianist Marc Hartman. It turned out to be so charming that it won her the role of Young Cossette.
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For the cabaret room, she presented an excellent version of “I Dreamed a Dream,” demonstrating her terrific control of volume and voice and building the number to a shattering climax.

Vivino did go beyond her own voice for a few adventures in camp. A medley of songs from Wicked, in which she spent a long time in as the green witch, focused on some unlikely stunt casting—involving Celine Dion, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Jodi Foster—with splendid impersonations of each. This was followed by a delightful Amanda Green ditty, “Just Be Who You Are,” that featured her evocation of Fran Drescher who volunteers to “put the Jew in Julie Andrews.” Returning to herself, she ended the show with a soulful, bluesy delivery of “Over the Rainbow” and encored with a recreation of her long-running role of Elphaba with a dynamite “Defying Gravity.” Throughout the evening, Vivino left no doubt that she indeed was born to be a Broadway baby.

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."