Carol Sue Gershman
Something New, Just for You
54 Below, NYC, October 16, 2024
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg
Carol Sue Gershman gave a party at 54 Below to celebrate her 89th birthday. She also celebrated the publication of her collection of essays on what she has learned in life, You Are Only ?? Years Young! Let the Fun Begin! and delivered a cabaret show. That may have been one item too many. She can certainly be praised for her enthusiasm and her sense of humor, but an experienced director might have brought a better organization to the evening. By the time she got to the best part of the evening—her cabaret show—it was almost too late.
Her first 15 minutes of the evening were devoted to something between a Ted Talk and a stand-up routine as she recited selections from her book. Her delivery wasn’t strong enough to support that much chat, and it was especially frustrating since there were more than a dozen viable song cues slipped by while her very talented quartet sat on stage with essentially nothing to do but to punctuate the end of each chapter. This would have been an excellent basis for a cabaret show, but it wasn’t used that way.
Finally, we got to the cabaret show, and—surprise!— it was a good show. She moved from a clever version of “I’ve Got the World on a String” (Harold Arlen/Ted Koehler) that incorporated the phrase “at 54” to make it very relevant, to a smart blending of “Lover Man” (Bobby Cole) and “That’s for Me” (Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II) and finally to an emotional “I Love Paris” (Cole Porter). Most of her songs were tied to her tales of travel and unexpected romances, which personalized the material very well. She especially excelled at numbers from the viewpoint of a sadder-but-wiser mature lady that included “Bewitched (Bothered and Bewildered)” (Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) and “Mad About the Boy” (Noël Coward).
The excellent instrumentalists who backed her up were music director Dan Furmar, drummer David Silliman, bassist Iris Ornig, and the exceptional saxophonist Carol Sudhalter. The flaws in the program might have been solved by a director who might have helped Gershman edit her program and encouraged her not to roam the stage so much and avoid numbers that relied too much on her weaker top range and to focus on her powerful middle register. The emotions she evoked with “But Beautiful” (Jimmy Van Heusen/Johnny Burke) were what it was all about, and with those she truly succeeded.
