photo by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
Joey Arias & Matt Doers in the dressing room at the Cherry Grove Community House
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The Arts Project of Cherry Grove (APCG) treated us to the unusual and wonderful world of performance artist Joey Arias, in a show billed as “Joey Arias Live!” at the Community House on September 2, with Matt Doers at the Yamaha.
Elegant in black, sultry Arias began by throatily singing the blues—“You’ve changed, the sparkle in your eyes is gone.” Arias sang moodily, ecstatically of love—“Livin’ for you is easy livin’,” with a shout-out to Daniel Nardicio in the third row—and later, enumerating “your eyes, … nose, … ears, … fingers, … toes, … feet, … [and] teeth,” declared, “Love is liking every part of you.”
“Something in the Way He Moves,” Arias oozed, signaling trading a few spanks with this Mr. Fire Island Leather. Doers played Claude Debussy’s “Claire de Lune” to underscore Arias’ monologue to and about Daddy, played to guess whom, which introduced a mesmerizing “God Bless the Child (who’s got his own),” Billie Holiday’s song. “I wait in this room where the sun never shines,” Arias, unraveling, lamented, and had visions of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., not to mention the men bringing that white straitjacket. Sharing stories of Bar d’O colleagues Raven-O and Sherry Vine, Arias sexily sang familiar gold-digger song “Why Don’t You Do Right?”
Inviting “(Why not take) All of Me,” Arias summoned this writer to the stage to address an a cappella verse to—does the line “Take my lips,” embellished with kisses, really recur three times in succession?—then sang it with Doers, and led a clap-along to Doers’ solo before reprising it. “Be My Baby,” Arias sang, with the audience joining in on the refrain, and ended the song pianissimo. Arias composed the next song, with “The phone is always ringing, I’m rarely ever home” sung to a Latin beat.
All that remained was Arias’ swinging rendition of Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale,” some of it sung to my buddy Candido Soares, also invited to join the diva on stage. Just can’t stop some of us from getting into the act!