Presented inhouse. Directed by Richard Jay-Alexander. With Seth Rudetsky. Opened, reviewed Feb. 10, 2009; closes March 7.
Betty Buckley returns to Feinstein's with her most enjoyable and entertaining act in years. "Broadway by Request" mixes a changing assortment of songs from singer's 40-year professional career with unfailingly amusing stories and anecdotes, giving us the best of Betty Buckley indeed.
Ms. Buckley has long been a proponent of what she terms eclectic jazz interpretations of songs she loves, which have a definite fan base in places like the Blue Note but are not necessarily what theater fans want to hear. During last winter's visit to the Park Avenue spot, she experimented with audience requests at a couple of latenight shows in hopes of boosting attendance. The reaction was favorable enough to persuade her and director Richard Jay-Alexander to come up with an all-request format, which they tested recently down in Buckley's home state of Texas. If the opening set at Feinstein's is any indication, "Broadway by Request" will be a holiday every night.
The format is simple. Musical director-comedian Seth Rudetsky comes out and shows a couple of amusing film clips -- each packing a surprise -- and then brings on the star, who opens with "As If We Never Said Goodbye" from "Sunset Boulevard." After some introductory patter, Betty pulls a request form (filled out by patrons in advance) from a champagne bucket and announces the title. Rudetsky, the one-man band and interlocutor of the evening, rifles through a stack of one hundred-odd songs while Buckley tells an anecdote. She then sings the song and pulls out the next slip of paper. That's pretty much it, for 70 or 80 minutes.
What makes the format work so well is that it forces Buckley to sing in unvarnished fashion, without the support and added musicianship of her usual band (an expert group led by Kenny Werner). Instead of progressive but sometimes indecipherable jazz, we get Broadway and we can recognize the tune. (A request for "No One Is Alone" from "Into the Woods" -- Buckley was the Witch in the workshop, although she was not invited to make the move to Broadway -- led her to mention Stephen Sondheim's icy reception of her interpretive recordings of his songs. After singing "Send in the Clowns," she urges any friends of the composer in the audience to call and tell him that she now carefully sings his songs precisely the way he wrote them.)
Along with her singing, Buckley demonstrates a friendly, easygoing and candid storytelling style. The first request at the opening brought forth "He Plays the Violin" from "1776," along with the story of how she moved to New York one morning in 1969, called an agent at noon, auditioned for the role of Martha Jefferson a few hours later -- the show was already in rehearsal, searching for an emergency replacement -- and landed her first Broadway show by nightfall. Three of the stories told us of jobs that she was not ultimately hired for, including a very funny one about her battling with Patti LuPone over "Meadowlark," a song that was cut from Stephen Schwartz's "The Baker's Wife" (which in any event never reached Broadway). Buckley's tale about the disastrous musicalization of "Carrie" was, understandably, full of wide-eyed humor. Vocal highlights were "Meadowlark" and a masterful "Whoever You Are," the latter from "Promises, Promises" (which Buckley played in London).
Buckley by request will, by definition, change from night to night. Many of the song choices will likely remain constant -- you can always expect to hear "Memory," along with singer's discussion of her struggle with what became her Tony Award-winning role in "Cats" -- but there is far too much to cover in only one set. The winning element to the program, though, is that Buckley spends half the time talking directly, openly, and humorously to the patrons.
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Date in print: Thu., Feb. 12, 2009