Live Out Loud
It is always gratifying to see a cabaret performer grow, and such is the case with one such emerging and promising cabaret performer, John Abernathy, a Tennessee native now living in Rhode Island. I couldn’t be happier to report that he has come an incredibly long way in a remarkably short time. Gone are the self-indulgent patter, the self-conscious posture, and the nervous smile. I’ve never seen anyone become so comfortable in his own skin so quickly. Whatever work he’s put into this has paid off handsomely. Oh, and did I mention he was handsome? In cabaret, this certainly doesn’t hurt, especially when your audience is mostly straight women and gay men.
Capitalizing on his appeal to gay men, Abernathy has managed a clever premise for his most recent show, Live Out Loud, which he premiered at the Hi-Hat on November 18th.
This very entertaining two-act show cobbles together songs written by openly gay songwriters in musical theater, cabaret, folk and pop, This eclectic mix holds together well due in no small measure to Jim Rice’s excellent piano accompaniment and arrangements, Ida Zecco’s well-paced direction, and especially Abernathy’s charm, winning presence, smooth vocals, and honest heartfelt deliveries of well-chosen material. On stage, Abernathy was poised, quietly confident, playful, and as sweet as Thanksgiving’s pumpkin pie.
In Live Out Loud, Abernathy, who didn’t come out to himself until he was 26, lets us all know the toll that the closet can take on the gay community, and offers this show as a tribute to those openly gay songwriters "who help give us the courage to be who we are." While some of the songwriters are familiar, such as Stephen Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, Elton John, and William Finn, his selections of their music are lesser known. Add to this some rather obscure cabaret writers, such as David Friedman, Fred Barton, Steven Lutvack, Rick Jensen, and John Bucchino, and you have the makings of a fascinating program, which Abernathy constructs extremely well, giving each act its own perfect arc.
Abernathy’s show is fun right from the start, opening with a parody of Kander and Ebb’s Wilkommen, called Welcome, Beinvenue! (Dan Goggin, from Balancing Act), aptly a song about putting on a gay cabaret show. He kept up the frivolity with Sam and Me, from When Pigs Fly (Gallagher/Waldrop), delivered with wry humor and a wink. Abernathy avoided his own temptations toward ballad-heavy programs and included a number of additional comic numbers, Such as Fred Barton’s Pour Me A Man (from Miss Gulch Returns), Exit Right (Lutvak/Campbell), about the vagaries of having relationships with self-absorbed actors (Abernathy’s self-admitted weakness), and David Friedman’s hilarious My Simple Christmas Wish, a tour-de-force for all actors who are impatiently awaiting fame. Abernathy takes well to this material, even if his comic timing isn’t always up to the task. With more prime time practice he will get the hang of it. It was enjoyable seeing him take the risk, which often paid off, and will pay off even more so in time.
When it came to the ballads, Abernathy was clearly in his element. With his greater focus on connecting with the lyrics, we were given a window to his soul in the unusual yet perfect pairing of Sondheim’s Loving You (from Passion) with So Many People (from Saturday Night). Here Abernathy takes Sondheim at his most romantically sentimental and gives the topics of desperate and unapproved love new meaning when sung by an openly gay man. He was riveting in Kander and Ebb’s Sometimes A Day Goes By (from Woman of the Year), not moving a muscle as he reflected on the depth of love. And in a tribute to the hearing-impaired, he offered Jeff Blumenkrantz’ He’ll Never Get What I Do (from Hush), waxing poignant as a musician who’s deaf loved one will never hear his work. Abernathy’s segue, "We don’t just hear music with our ears, we hear it with our hearts," reflected how the entire audience felt when he concluded the song.
Not all his selections worked as well. Opening the second act with William Finn’s My Unfortunate Erection may have seemed interesting on paper, but didn’t work in the context of the show, especially when the song is so specific to the show (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), yet was delivered with no set-up. Also, Rick Jensen’s song, My Baby and Me, sung in mock song-and-dance style, using a riding crop as the cane, was amusing at the outset. But truth be told, the sight of Abernathy with a riding crop was distracting enough to eclipse whatever else was going on, so perhaps some choices need to be made about the prop or the delivery.
The show was clearly at its strongest when Abernathy and the material focused on being out and proud. I can’t wait to see Abernathy get Avenue Q’s song If You Were Gay completely under his belt, because his choreographed arrangement is great fun. And he offered a delightfully personal and loopy take on DC Anderson’s Your Father and I Have Been Talking, in which a yenta of a mother offers unsolicited advice to her gay out-of-work actor of a son.
However, the highlights of the show came at both act’s closings. In Act 1, Abernathy closed with And the Ship Sails On, Kirby Tepper’s epic story song about a pair of lesbian seagulls sneaking onto Noah’s Arc. First introduced into Boston circles by leading cabaret performer, John O’Neil, this ambitious wordy 8-minute piece is a risky proposition, yet Abernathy offered a letter-perfect delivery, including a rather amusing impersonation of Noah. In Act 2, he hooked us with another John O’Neil staple, Ernie Lijoi’s Chandler Street, a flawless paean to gay self-made families. Delivered with great conviction, Abernathy brought the power of this beautiful song straight home. He then capped the moment and the show with Andrew Lippa’s Live Out Loud, about living free, Abernathy distilled the meaning of his show into this one song. This is a show Abernathy could perform any time, but seems perfectly tailored for Gay Pride. With luck, we will have a chance to see this well conceived and well-crafted show over and over.
by John Abernathy
