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KISS ME LIKE YOU MEAN IT returns to Don't Tell Mama Sunday, November 22 @ 3:30pm
More details on "Where can you find me?"
AND, here's the latest review, from the St. Louis run of Kiss Me!!
Many of the graduates of Tim Schall’s St. Louis Cabaret
Conference have gone straight from there to the Kranzberg Center with their
solo shows. Angie Schultz – who was in the very first conference in 2006
– took the long way around: she went through New York. Her latest show, Kiss
Me Like You Mean It, premiered at Don’t Tell Mama on West 46th Street last May. Now that Jim Dolan’s
Presenters Dolan organization has finally brought her home to the Kranzberg all I can say is: it’s about time!
If Mr. Schall (one of the many local performers taking a
busman’s holiday to attend the show Sunday night) is looking for a poster girl
for the conference, he could hardly do better than Ms. Shultz. Kiss Me
Like You Mean It is very nearly the ideal
show, boasting a finely balanced program of mostly newer songs, wonderful
custom-tailored arrangements from pianist/music director Brett Kristofferson
(including some of his own material), and performances by both Ms. Shultz and Mr. Kristofferson that were
pitch-perfect – both musically and theatrically. The ease with which she
graced the space and the charming, self-effacing humor which she brought to
both her patter and her singing were a winning combination.
Ms. Shultz’s ability to be entirely herself on the stage is
not, by the way, something to be taken lightly. As performers, so many of us
spend so much time being someone else that stripping away all of the other
personae and simply being ourselves can be the most difficult act of all.
Combine Ms. Shultz’s comfort with her own identity with her solid, beautifully
controlled vocal instrument and you have a recipe for a great night of cabaret.
Even the evening’s title is perfect, suggesting a
combination of assertion and seduction that is reflected in just over a dozen songs
which run the emotional gamut from John Bucchino’s touching “Unexpressed” and
Ben Folds’ lovely “The Luckiest” to Jill Sobule’s demented “Mexican Wrestler”
(easily one of the strangest torch songs ever written) and the always-amusing
“Compromise” by Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler. There are also two gems of
love lost from Mr. Kristofferson – “Goodbye Love” and “Things that Haunt
Me” – and director Hector Coris’ hilarious send-up of American Idolatry,
“My Moment”. The fact that many of these songs were new to me was yet another
bonus from my point of view.
Even the older numbers, such as Arlen and Harburg’s “I Don’t
Think I’ll End it All Today” (from their 1959 musical Jamaica, where it was sung by Lena Horne), were hardly
warhorses. I love the Great American Songbook as well as the next cabaret
addict, but it’s nice to be reminded now and then that pages are still being
added to it. Ms. Shultz, Mr. Kristofferson, and Mr. Coris are to be commended
for their eclectic and smart song selection.
Ms. Shultz is undoubtedly on her way back to New York by
now, where she’s booked for a return appearance at Don’t Tell Mama. Her star
is (to paraphrase an old vaudeville lyric) on the ascendant. Chuck Lavazzi, KDHX.org