Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
Thos Shipley presented a tribute to Nat King Cole Saturday evening, March 25, at the Metropolitan Room to a sold out audience, both vocal and warmly enveloping. Shipley’s is a relaxed and open personality, unpretentious and accessible. Whether that was cultivated by, or enabling of, his varied background, I cannot know. But it works. (Shipley was raised by a teacher mom and army dad; spent his youth in Japan; studied electrical engineering, followed by acting and singing; performs locally and internationally and is now Ward Councilman in Roselle Park, New Jersey.) You want to like this man, and he makes it easy. He is, despite his current political role, a cabaret professional who has precisely prepared all aspects of the performance – befitting his broad experience on Broadway, regional theater and local and international cabaret and recording. And, again, it works. The show feels spontaneous and relaxed – perhaps because of the careful preparation.
Shipley was backed by Tom Guarna on guitar, David Finck on double bass, and Mark Soskin on Piano. These very able musicians had too brief opportunities to solo, but made the most of each one. Each is individually impressive, but they were there in the service of Shipley, and Cole, and delivered a smooth, and, as needed, swinging or syncopated sound, providing solid but unobtrusive support.
The show opens with a brief video of Cole; Shipley enters and blends into a Cole lyric to join the two performers, so we are immediately engaged, and alert to the connection. The band starts and we are launched into a medley of Straighten Up and Fly Right (Cole, Mills), I Love You For Sentimental Reasons (Watson, Best) and Route 66 (Chuck Berry, a timely reminder of his recent passing).
Shipley intermittently tells us a bit about Cole (nee Nathaniel Adams Coles), instructed by his mother in classical piano but, to his father’s chagrin, finding his heart in jazz. (I have supplemented the Cole history here.) Cole struck out on his own at 15 and gained renown for his piano playing. He was christened “Nat King Cole” by a band mate and initially prodded to sing, reluctantly, by an insistent, tipsy patron. He sang, then, a song that became one of his signature numbers; so did Shipley: Sweet Lorraine (Burwell, Parish) – with a brief but captivating Soskin solo.
Mark Soskin
Cole was so widely recorded that Shipley had a broad repertoire from which to choose material strongly associated with Cole’s name. Each number will resonate with many as being the Cole song they best remember. With the medley of Nature Boy (attributed to Cole), Mona Lisa (Evans, Livingston) and The Christmas Song (Wells, Torme), I heard Cole in Shipley, and relaxed into the evening.
The show is a tribute – not a recreation, but Shipley has, in addition to his own sonorous sound, much of the warmth and (for this performance, at least) some of the musical mannerisms of Cole, so that Cole is often spontaneously recalled to memory. This is helped in part by the (minimal) costume changes and the instrumental backing, both stylistically reminiscent of Cole.
Shipley related an aspect of the racism of the time that kept Cole in his place and at least privately somewhat bitter: Cole was simultaneously lionized for his talent and vilified as a black man attempting to popularize “black” music. He was personally harassed from both sides of the issue, but he strove to open the national entertainment industry to blacks. He enjoyed a truncated single season hosting a variety TV show on NBC, which footed the bill until it was agreed that, for fear of southern backlash, no national sponsor would be forthcoming. Despite support of black and white headliners (Nelson Riddle, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, Pearl Bailey, Mahailia Jackson, Sammy Davis, Jr., Tony Bennett, Harry Belafonte – among others, working for minimum scale), the show could not be sustained. Cole was physically attacked and intimidated. Without stressing the connection, Shipley sings the plaintive Smile (Chaplin, Turner and Parsons).
With the advent of Rock and Roll, Cole bridled, but Shipley relates that he did expand his jazz approach to include pop and country music; Shipley dons a new jacket and hat to evoke the ‘Cole cool’ to perform Send for Me (Jones) with some nice solo licks by Guarna, and Wild is Love (Rasch, Wayne). A silky rendition of It’s a Beautiful Evening (Rasch, Wayne) again brought back Cole for me.
As a performer, Shipley reflects those characteristics we might expect him to have picked up from his parents – discipline, a work ethic, respect for himself and his audience. He is clearly working on stage: not straining but delivering; not enraptured by fully engaged. He is confident, comfortable, musical and enjoying the process. You will too.
After additional Cole standards, Shipley began to wind down the evening with the obligatory Unforgettable (Gordon). The audience was not ready to end the evening. A video of Cole was projected on the back of the stage and Shipley again echoed Cole in voice and movement – bringing the performance full circle to the initial montage. Shipley thanked the staff, the musicians, the audience, his manager and husband, and slid into the “final” number of L-O-V-E (Kaempfert, Gabler). At this point, the audience was singing along unbidden and would barely let Shipley off the stage. An encore of Paper Moon (Arlen, E. Y. Harburg and Rose) closed the performance. This is an enjoyable show for boomers who listened to Nat King Cole when growing up and for new comers to the American Songbook – who never had the pleasure.
Shipley will be performing on May 18, 2017 at Maureen’s Jazz Cellar in Nyack at 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.; current booking information can be found at www.ThosShipley.com. He plans to return to the Metropolitan Room in the summer.
Author Michael Schulman, a contributor and arts editor for The New Yorker, became particularly intrigued with Meryl Streep because of her self-effacing acceptance speeches. How, he thought, can the foremost actor of our generation (not, his, he’s younger), be surprised at and humble about her success? “To be called the greatest living actor, something even my own mother wouldn’t sanction is a curse…” the actor has said. “When I heard my name, I could hear half of America saying her again?!” (her Oscar acceptance speech for The Iron Lady)
Was she ever just a struggling, 20-something performer, Schulman asked himself? Did she arrive from Yale in full bloom, preternatural talent ripe? “When most actresses have reached their sell-by date, she continues to carry movies…so little is known about the early days…The book is not a soup to nuts biography, it’s about her origins.” The author met the very private Streep only once, for a Talk of the Town piece, not this later volume. He interviewed 80 of the artist’s friends and associates, dug through archival material and viewed performance on film and video.
This thoroughly entertaining glimpse at Schulman’s book begins with Mary Louise Streep of Bernardsville, New Jersey, “a brassy bully who didn’t care how she looked.” In fact, the preteen photo resembles a librarian. She studied singing with an opera coach (I hear a few ah has out there), but changed priorities upon discovering boys.
“Essentially, she decided to be another person.” Streep studied the girls in Seventeen and Mademoiselle Magazines. She actually said/wrote that she practiced giggling and became purposefully deferential so boys would appreciate her. She went blonde. The next photo we see projected is the fair haired young woman as a cheerleader. She was Homecoming Queen. “They liked me better and I liked that, but this was real acting.”
“Super Hero origins are all about their learning to apply their powers.” This heroine’s journey began at Vassar when it was an all girls school. She stopped “faking her way” and found herself making lifelong friends. “My brain woke up” (Streep) Schulman reads excerpts from letters she wrote to an earlier high school boyfriend then stationed in Vietnam. Streep was searching for something that took her out of herself. Even after her first appearance starring in Strindberg’s Miss Julie, she was ambivalent. Still, she applied to Yale- because the admission fee was $25 less than Julliard.
Schulman tells us about early New York roles featuring humor and character, not as an ingénue, calling out the artist’s lack of vanity and fear as well as obvious empathy. He shows us photographs from Arthur Wing Pinero’s Trelawney of the Wells (at Lincoln Center), and Happy End (Weill/Brecht/Lane.)
Streep’s breakout appearance, he suggests, was in the tandem Twenty Seven Wagons Full of Cotton (Tennessee Williams) and A Memory of Two Mondays (Arthur Miller.) In one of several wonderful descriptions of auditions shared by fellow thespians, John Lithgow describes her chatting amiably with director Arvin Brown as she took down her hair, changed her shoes, and stuffed her brassiere with tissues.
In the first play, Streep played a languid, brassy, southern sexpot; in the second, a steely, urban secretary that was so different, people didn’t recognize her. I can testify to that. I was there with my mother who double checked her program. We both felt in the presence of astonishing talent.
Joe Papp’s production Measure for Measure in Central Park introduced Streep to John Cazale who was older, an established film actor, and by all reports, extremely eccentric. (Cazale played Fredo in The Godfather.) The two fell madly in love and moved in together. Tragically, he was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. At 28, Streep dropped everything to join the cast of TheDeer Hunter in order to be with Cazale during his last film. “They needed a girl between two guys and I was it.” Al Pacino was floored by her devotion which is, he says, the first thing he thinks of upon seeing Streep. Cazale died shortly after. He never saw the film.
“She got into movies despite herself,” Schulman tells us. “This was the first of 19 Academy Award nominations. Six months later, Streep married sculptor Don Gummer, the second great love of her life. They have three daughters.” Then came The Taming of The Shrew in Central Park, Woody Allen’s Manhattan and Kramer vs. Kramer the film that arguably made her a star (and garnered her first Academy Award.) Schulman says he writes quite a bit about the pivotal juncture, ending with it.
Apparently Streep’s recollection of that audition was diametrically opposed to those others present. She recalls telling the men that as written Joanna was “an ogre, a princess, an ass,” further informing those who might hire her that the character was a reflection of the struggle women go through all across the country; that she had a reason for leaving and a reason for coming back. If she was to be hired, rewriting must take place. (Streep actually ended up rewriting parts of the role, including courtroom testimony. “Once she applies her sense of empathy,” Schulman comments, “characters that were villains become heroes…think of The Devil Wears Prada.”)
Director Robert Benton and Dustin Hoffman remember the audition being a disaster, Streep’s hardly saying anything. Hoffman wanted to hire her because of Cazale, because he felt she could draw upon fresh pain. During the shoot, he taunted and even once slapped her to evoke what he felt necessary in the only method acting way he knew how. “He’s bragged about this since….” The floor opened to questions after Schulman’s talk.
Michael Schulman speaks to Streep’s feelings about service, sacrifice, femininity, feminism, and empathy with some insight. By focusing on a particular, lesser known period, he illuminates and entertains. All the chapter heads call out a major role except one entitled Fredo. This is likely a very good book.
Top photo: Meryl Streep attends The Iron Lady photocall during the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival at the Grand Hyatt on February 14, 2012 in Berlin, Germany. Big stock photo.
