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photo byBruce-Michael Gelbert
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Sarah Rice & Telly Leung
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Singer Brandon Cutrell and pianist Ray Fellman’s Broadway at the Beach season finale at the Ice Palace, delayed a week by Hurricane Irene, took place instead on Labor Day, and featured exceptional stars of the caliber of Sarah Rice, the original Johanna from Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” and Telly Leung, from the cast of the forthcoming Broadway revival of Stephen Schwartz’s “Godspell,” and also from television’s “Glee.” DJ Chuck McTague was responsible for sound.
Rice lent her bel canto soprano to an exploration of “Temptation” (“You were temptation”), “Jealousy” (“Jealousy, night and day you torture me”), and “Revenge” (“My heart is crying revenge”), in Hollywood/gypsy style, complete with coloratura and castanets. On the penchant of high sopranos for singing bird songs and mad scenes, Rice sang “When I was a little cuckoo,” which combined both and included some stratospheric top notes, and favored us with her famous solo from “Todd,” “Green Finch and Linnet Bird,” mercifully unamplified, and with trills intact. Leung, who had offered “All Good Gifts,” from “Godspell,” sung sweetly, then expansively, paid homage to Rice with a dulcet “Johanna,” from “Todd,” and closed the show with “Simple Joy,” with Rice on tambourine.
Cutrell began the evening gently looking at life from the vantage point of different ages (“I’m 15 for a moment”), and considering that “you only get a hundred years to live,” and announced “Brandon and Ray’s Birthday Bash,” at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, on West 42nd Street, on October 14 at midnight. Rice joined David Vernon—with whom she’ll be doing a show and who, earlier, issued an irresistible invitation in “There’s a boat that’s leavin’ soon for New York,” from the Gershwins and Heywards’ “Porgy and Bess”—in a truly classy “Scarborough Fair”-cum-“Canticle,” by Simon and Garfunkle.
Kyle Post, from the cast of “Spiderman,” sang “Open Arms”—or was it “Broken Arms?”—from that show. Trevor McQueen, who was in the revival of Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun” with Bernadette Peters, accompanied himself in several pop songs and, with Fellman, sang “The Man That Got Away,” the Judy Garland classic. Kenny Holcomb belted out a lusty “Big, Bald and Beautiful,” his version of “Big, Blonde and Beautiful,” from “Hairspray,” and moved us with Peter Allen’s “Once before I Go.” Ariel Sinclair became mad Norma Desmond, from “Sunset Boulevard,” mesmerizing us “With One Look.”
From the open mic list, Ken Woodhouse sang Rodgers and Hart’s “Johnny One Note,” Rosemary Paladino delivered another Allen number (“Let’s begin with goodbye”), and this writer tackled Jerry Herman’s “I Am What I Am,” from “La Cage aux Folles.”