The Seth Rudetsky Concert Series featuring Kelli O’Hara
Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts, Scottsdale, AZ, October 19, 2024
Reviewed by Lynn Timmons Edwards
Kelli O’Hara opened the show with “I’m in Love with a Wonderful Guy” (from Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific), and the audience was clearly in love with her. O’Hara was born to play R&H ingenues. Even at 48, she can pull off characters in their 20s as well as more mature characters such as Kirsten Arnesen in Days of Wine and Roses or Francesca Johnson in The Bridges of Madison County, roles she originated on Broadway. She is currently filming Season 3 of The Gilded Age for HBO.
Rudetsky was in his element. A brilliant pianist and music director, he is quite comfortable in this fast-paced and somewhat improvisational format of gossip and song with a veteran pro like O’Hara. After the opening number they sat and talked about her well- deserved Tony award for The King and I. I have seen O’Hara twice on Broadway, in that show and in The Light in the Piazza, both at Lincoln Center. They followed with “Hello, Young Lovers.” He poked a little fun at her when he called her “the Susan Lucci of Broadway” because she had been nominated many times before winning the award.
O’Hara majored in opera and vocal performance in college, but grew up watching movie musicals, and her heart was always in musical theater. She thanked her voice teacher for tearing up her graduate school application to continue studying opera and said to her “go do what you love.” O’Hara, like her friend Kristin Chenoweth, is from Oklahoma. She credited Chenoweth for helping her secure an agent and launch her career in New York. They are currently touring together in a show called Macaroni Grill. The title comes from their mutual experience of working as singing servers at Macaroni Grills.
Rudetsky next called for a Sondheim’s “What More Do I Need.” O’Hara, like Streisand, is first and foremost an actor who sings from the perspective of a character. She endowed her classically trained, glorious legit voice (rare among current Broadway stars) with physical comedy or pathos depending on the lyric.
My understanding is that Rudetsky is supposed to stick to “the book” that his guests provide, but he goaded O’Hara into singing one of Christine’s numbers from The Phantom of the Opera (a role for which she auditioned but was never cast), feeding her the lyrics along the way. This gave way to some coloratura action few singers can produce. O’Hara was having fun and going with the flow, especially when she played the accent game on “Getting to Know You” from her stint in The King and I in New York and London. Apparently when the show moved to London, she was told that the British accent she had been using and for which she won the Tony was “all wrong.” There is the 1940s Julie Andrews accent and the 1860s accent that is authentic. She went back and forth on commands from Rudetsky and then got a big laugh when she finished using a Joan Roberts Bronx accent. Roberts, who lived to be 95, was the original Laurie in Oklahoma! and appeared in Follies in 2001 with O’Hara. Roberts thought nothing of asking O’Hara to get her a taxi after the show.
O’Hara soared on “So in Love” from Kiss Me Kate (Cole Porter) and “He Loves Me” from She Loves Me, (Sheldon Harnick/Jerry Bock) which she dedicated to her husband Greg Naughton. She took us back to “The Light in the Piazza” (Adam Guettel) and peaked with the opening song from The Bridges of Madison County “To Build a Home.” Rudetsky called his husband on What’s App so that he could watch it remotely.
O’Hara and Rudetsky performed a cute duet from The Pajama Game and O’Hara’s favorite male song from South Pacific “This Nearly Was Mine.” They closed with the soprano standard “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady, and then Rudetsky called immediately for the encore. O’Hara had flown to Arizona that morning and it was then past midnight EST. She donned a fashionable western hat for “They Don’t Let You Sing Opera—If You’re a Country Western Star” written for her by Dan Lipton and David Rossmer. She described it as her own “Glitter and Be Gay.” No offense to Bernstein, but it is better! If you have never heard it, look for it on YouTube. Based loosely on her life, it showcased every acting chop and every high note the human ear can hear. O’Hara appeared with the Metropolitan Opera in 2022 and 2024 in the contemporary opera The Hours. Although she didn’t dance for us, she is the consummate triple threat—beautiful, graceful, and gracious. We have to thank the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts for once again bringing Broadway to Arizona.