Christy Trapp: The Tender Trapp: Christy Trapp Sings Frank Sinatra

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Christy Trapp

The Tender Trapp: Christy Trapp Sings Frank Sinatra

Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, April 30, 2025

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

 

Christy Trapp

In the tiresome legion of Frank Sinatra cabaret tributes, Christy Trapp came up with a novel twist: viewing his songlist from a female perspective. Early in her show she announced that she would explore Sinatra’s “standards and his double standards.” It was disappointing that she went on to emphasize the first category and paid little attention to the second. She certainly had an A team behind her: director Jeff Harnar, music director/pianist Alex Rybeck, bassist Ritt Henn, and drummer Rex Benincasa, who all performed at their expected excellence.

Trapp began the show far too desperate to be liked and relied heavily on being cute and perky like a Miss America contestant, which worked against the cool Sinatra image. As the show progressed, she seemed to relax and become far more focused and mature. After a clever but too silly medley of “Come Dance with Me” and “I Like to Lead When I Dance” (both by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen) and a “Luck Be a Lady” (Frank Loesser) that simply didn’t make sense, things began to get better with the emotionally solid “All the Way” (Cahn/Van Heusen) and a pitch-perfect “Nice n’ Easy” (Lew Spence/Alan & Marilyn Bergman). A medley of “Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars” (Antonio Carlos Jobim/Gene Lees) and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” (Cole Porter) had a beautiful musical arrangement that was far more faithful to Porter than Sinatra usually was. Trapp also earned credits for using the entire stage (a Harnar trademark).

Three songs were cleverly linked but were marred by some unamusing patter about the multi-married Sinatra. They were “Love and Marriage” (Cahn/Van Heusen), “Wives and Lovers” (Hal David/Burt Bacharach), and “I Love My Wife” (Michael Stewart/Cy Coleman). “I’m a Fool to Want You” (Sinatra/Jack Wolf/Joel Herron) received an excellent film-noirish arrangement. Trapp did find the necessary gravitas to make a fine delivery of “The House I Live In” (Lewis Allan/Earl Robinson). She is certainly a talented performer with an excellent voice; hopefully, her next show will provide her with material she can bring a more adult approach to.

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 & Noble, 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."

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