Back to the Harris for the second show in the Broadway Lumniaries series - An Evening with Christine Ebersole. I had seen Christine (twice!) in Grey Gardens on Broadway (this is just turning into a list of things I have to thank Sarah for, isn't it?) and I loved her in it, but aside from that, I had not heard her do anything else. So I went into the evening not knowing what to expect (aside, of course, from the weird neon lights, padded walls and stark institutional looking Harris Theater, and no I'm never going to stop grumbling about how awful that place looks. If they keep doing awesome things there, then I will go, but I don't have to love the place.).
When we walked in to the house last night, two things happened - I noticed that they were playing music - not Christine, but broadway music. I think it was probably the Playbill station. I was clued in to this mainly because we had just sat down and started leafing thru the program when a familiar voice exclaimed "Here she is, boys!! Here she is, world! Here's ROSE!" with an evil sounding cackle. Yes, Patti started belting Rose's Turn over the theater's sound system. Then a friendly guy named Shane came over and told us that he had champagne and wine in his little red cooler bag and we could buy it whenever we wanted. The wine, I am not joking here, was in a little box. Like a little boozy juice box. They even gave patrons a straw with it. I am happy to report that the woman who was next to us for the Sondheim conversation (the one taking noisy pictures, remember her?) was not there. The seat next to our 2 was empty. Although there was a thing in the row behind us, this lady went up to the couple on the end and said something like, "I'm just going to sit in that seat there and hope nobody comes!" the gentleman would not budge and told her to go and talk to the usher if she wanted to change seats. If you're going to try and be sneaky, don't be so obvious about it!!! Whatever.
Then - the band came out and so did Christine. She was all in black (and looked fab!) and started singing away. She told us that hers was a cabaret with songs that could not be sung in polite society. Songs about sex, love, politics, and the most controversial subject of all - at least in Chicago, anyway - the weather.
In between songs, she told little stories that led into the next song, a few times punctuated with quotes from Little Edie. She was charming, hilarious, and ohmygosh, can she ever SING. I don't know all of what she sang, except she sang 42nd Street, Stormy Weather (which blew the roof off of that place!), the Last Rose of Summer (I think that's what it is called), a song about Chicago (cuz she's from here! She is from Winnetka which she told us is a Native American word meaning 'affluent gentile' although she claims to have come from the 'other side of the tracks.' Is there an other side of the tracks in Winnetka, even? And at the end, she channeled Eartha Kitt (I am going to take her word on that one, b/c I am not really well versed in Eartha. Or even if that's how you spell "Eartha").
It all seemed to go by too quickly - I could listen to her sing for hours. Come back to us soon, Christine, because it was a lovely evening.
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