‘After her SOLD-OUT SHOWS last year in New York, Chicago and Puerto Vallarta, and on the heels of winning another Award in NY… Broadway, Concert, Recording Artist Karen Mason brings a celebration of her favourite music to her favourite new place in London: The Crazy Coqs. Sassy, brassy, and tinged with confessional monologues and songs from some of her favourite writers, Karen will share her love of music and her love of storytelling.’
Review by Stephen Gilchrist
At the beginning of her set, Karen Mason advises, only half-jokingly, that the room in which she was performing, was ‘safe space’. A safe space from the world’s current craziness, uncertainty and chaos. And it is true that in the intimate world of cabaret, where the relationship of performer to audience is of an amity and closeness that is absent from other forms of the performing arts, as if to exclude the world outside. And if to give substance to that hypothesis Karen Mason proved it in spades with show ‘Broadway Baby’.
Karen Mason is indeed a ‘Broadway Baby’. She has appeared in eight Broadway shows and famously understudied, and took over from, Glen Close as Norma Desmond in ‘Sunset Boulevard’ both on the Great White Way and in Los Angeles. She is the recipient of the 2019 MAC Lifetime Achievement Award and is a 14-time MAC Award winner (Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs which honours achievements in cabaret) and has won the MAC Award for Major Female Vocalist of the Year for six consecutive years. She has also recorded six albums. So, as you can see, like her friend Lorna Dallas, whose gig I recently reviewed and who was in the house, she is the real McCoy.
Ms Mason delivered a delicious presentation of some fourteen numbers one or two segueing into each other, all with superb arrangements by Christopher Denny & Barry Kleinbort and played with his usual excellence by, arguably, numero uno of cabaret musical directors, Simon Beck.
Each thrilling number, wrapped around the artiste’s tonsils, became an event, as she delivered her full vocal range, and delivering, in turn, gritty, passionate, and emotive performances. She opened with a cute, flirty and saucy version of Kander and Ebb’s ‘All that Jazz’. There was an artless and authentic rendition of the two well-known Michelle Legrand numbers from ‘Les Parapluis de Cherbourg’ –‘Watch What Happens, doubled with ‘I Will Wait For You’. ‘Taking a Chance on Love’ slowly swung and bringing back memories of Ethel Waters who introduced the song in ‘Cabin in the Sky’.
In a superb arrangement of ‘Mr Snow’ from Carousel (Ms Mason played Carrie in a production’, by the late Brian Lasser, Beck played the rhythmic chords of the ‘Soliloquy’ to back Mason on the verse melody line. What a great effect that was and of course beautifully sung.
Towards the end of the set Mason pulled off a clever doubling of ‘On Broadway’ and ‘Broadway Baby’, the former by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil in collaboration with the team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, and the latter of course by Sondheim from ‘Follies’.
We were now in for a treat as Mason replicated her performance as Norma Desmond in ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye’. A transformation occurred before our eyes as the bubbly personality we had warmed to, became the delusional silent movie star returning to Paramount Pictures studio, imagining a grand comeback after years of obscurity. Her handling of the soaring melodies and a key change made me wish I had had the opportunity to see her in the role,
Karen Mason gave us a glorious evening of song and performance and proved she was one of the foremost exponents of cabaret. A thrilling show, to be held long in the memory.
Karen Mason: BROADWAY BABY
The Crazy Coqs, London
June 16th, 6:30pm
And All That Jazz – Kander & Ebb
42nd Street/Let Yourself Go – Warren/Dubin & Berlin
A Whole New World – Menken & Rice
Watch What Happens/I Will Wait For You – Legrand & Gimbel
Taking A Chance On Love – Duke, La Touche & Fetter
Mister Snow – Rodgers & Hammerstein [arranged by Brian Lasser]
He’s Got A Way – Billy Joel
Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend – Styne/Robin
I Have A Dream – Andersson & Ulvaeus
Play Me A Country Song – Briggs & Manfredini
On Broadway/Broadway Baby – Mann & Weil/Sondheim
Help/Being Alive – Lennon & McCartney/Sondheim
As If We Never Said Goodbye – Lloyd Webber, Don Black & Christopher Hampton
Over The Rainbow – Arlen & Harburg
[Unless otherwise stated, all arrangements are by Christopher Denny & Barry Kleinbort]
