On March 27, the Cherry Grove Fire Department (CGFD) valiantly fought a fire on Holly Walk that devastated the Grove Hotel and three other structures. On June 11, CGFD acquired a much-needed, expensive new fire truck. And on July 11, impresario Daniel Nardicio put on a gala benefit at the Ice Palace, not destroyed with the rest of the Grove Hotel, for CGFD, with funds going toward the purchase of the new truck. The dynamic show, fittingly entitled “Cherry Grove Is on Fire!,” featured a host of illustrious artists, with Broadway’s Alan Cumming as headliner.
Cumming began with a dance number with the Varsity Interpretive Dance Squad and the Fire Island Dancers, which found him wrapped in a fire hose and carried by the dancers. He reminisced about his concerts here with Liza Minnelli in 2012 and about checking clothes at Daniel’s Underwear Party the previous night. With Music Director Lance Horne at the piano, Cumming, always dazzling, sang “Mein Herr,” from “Cabaret,” in tribute to Minnelli. He recalled a condom commercial, which he did with Ricki Lake, for the Trojan Ecstasy, and he and Horne sang the song they wrote for it, also called “Ecstasy.” Cumming concluded with a medley of Adele’s “Someone like You,” Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory,” and Katy Perry’s “Firework.”
Earlier in the evening, Porsche, who hosted, first introduced Broadway’s Vivian Reed (“Bubbling Brown Sugar”), assisted by pianist William Foster McDaniel, and singing “Blues in the Night,” capped with an amazing ascending cadenza. Reed urged, with intense feeling, “Believe in Yourself,” in the anthem from “The Wiz.” Ariel Sinclair contributed a bawdy number. Direct from a show at the Community House, for the Arts Project of Cherry Grove, comic Michelle Balan joked about past conditions in the Grove Hotel, aging, and sex, and suggested walking through the Meat Rack and announcing, “We’re vegans.” With Horne, Brad Bradley lamented, “Sluts, we sleep alone on Monday night.”
Accompanying herself on guitar, Jill Sobule, who wrote “I Kissed a Girl (I liked It),” sang a song she had just written about a drag queen called “Ice Palace,” and another that she wrote “about the history of America and how we’re all immigrants,” with audience and company joining her in singing the highly political refrain, “When they say we want our America back … well, what the fuck do they mean?”
Michael Longoria (“Jersey Boys” original cast, Midtown Men) sang “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” and, with Horne, “Corner of the Sky,” from “Pippin,” both with high embellishments. The firefighters of CGFD came to the stage and were given a richly-deserved standing ovation before Cumming’s set. And the gala concluded with Ana “Ana Matronic” Lynch, of the Scissor Sisters, performing their hit “Let’s Have a Kiki,” amended to be about last year’s Grove Invasion of the Pines getting postponed by a day because of Hurricane Arthur, and was joined on stage for her “Kiki” by the Varsity and Fire Island Dancers and, somehow, me.

photo by KOITZ

Ana Matronic (and Bruce-Michael Gelbert with her) & The Varsity Interpretive Dance Squad

.......................................................................................................................................................................................