Here's to Life

Kitty Carlisle Hart at The Cabaret in The Savoy Room

In the beginning there was the Grandel Cabaret Series, which moved to the Sheldon Concert Hall and begat the Grand Center Cabaret Series - which died and has now been reincarnated as the Cabaret at the Savoy Room series. It's still at the Sheldon, but bumped upstairs to the newly remodeled Savoy ballroom, with the audience seated at tables, nightclub style, complete with a limited but adequate selection of drinks and table service.

In his introductory remarks on opening night [October 19, 2006], Mike Isaacson noted the difficulty in deciding who to book as the opening act for this re-birth of cabaret in Grand Center. What was needed was someone who would “bless the room” - a realization that led, inevitably, to engaging Kitty Carlisle Hart.

I say “inevitably” because Ms. Hart, at the age of 96, is one of the few survivors of a century that saw the flowering of what is now generally referred to as The Great American Songbook. An alumna of the Sorbonne, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and the London School of Economics as well as a star of the stage and screen, wife of playwright Moss Hart, and friend of many of the biggest names in American musical theatre, Kitty Carlisle Hart is a vital link to our theatrical past. She is, as a result, something of a national treasure. When she shares anecdotes about George Gershwin's womanizing or Jerome Kern's high musical standards, she's not repeating something she read in a biography, she's speaking from personal experience. It's as close as most of us will ever get to living history.

I mention all this before getting to the specifics of Ms. Hart's performance because it's important to set that performance in context. It's precisely because she has lived through so much theatrical history and become such a fixture on the American cultural scene that I and the other audience members were so willing to forgive the fact that her voice is now only a shadow of its former self (albeit pretty darn respectable for a woman in her 10th decade) or that she occasionally lost her way and had to be prompted by her stalwart musical director (and musical theatre veteran in his own right) David Lewis. When history speaks and sings, one should listen.

Lewis, by the way deserves a round of applause of his own. An award-winning musical director and accompanist for Carol Channing, among others, as well as a pianist of note, Lewis provided sympathetic and seamless musical backing for Hart and even had the opportunity to play Maurice Chevalier to Hart's Hermione Gingold in an appropriately sentimental rendition of “I Remember It Well” from Gigi.

Lewis' assistance and the occasional misstep aside, however, there's no denying that Hart is still quite the raconteur, with a raft of interesting stories and an infallible sense of where to drop a punch line. Describing the way in which time passes so quickly as one ages, for example, she noted that “after fifty, every fifteen minutes it's breakfast” - drawing plenty of sympathetic laughter from her largely middle-aged audience.

The songs sprinkled throughout the evening are the usual “greatest hits” from Gershwin, Kern, Porter, Berlin, and Weill along with less-familiar numbers such as “Alone” (from A Night at the Opera) and Sondheim's “Old Friend” (from Merrily We Roll Along) - re-titled “Old Friends” and addressed to the audience. Hart and Lewis did all of them up proud.

Hart also had a few surprises up her well-tailored sleeve, including a couple of snippets from Harold Rome's agitprop classic Pins and Needles and William Bolcom's droll “Lime Jello [sic] Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise”. I have a 20-year-old recording of the latter by Bolcom and Joan Morris, but until last week I'd never heard it done live. Bolcom says the song was inspired by memories of Ladies' Musical Club soirees he attended as a boy. Judging from the fun she has with it, I'd say Ms. Hart has probably attended a few herself.

The bottom line is that, from the opening video montage of Hart's film and TV appearances to the closing performance of the song that gave the evening its title, Kitty Carlisle Hart had the audience pretty firmly in the palm of her well-manicured hand - so much so that, when encouraged to join in on the chorus of Irving Berlin's “Always”, no one hesitated for an instant - including your esteemed reviewer.

Next at the Savoy Room: Broadway star Jessica Molasky, whose second solo CD A Good Day was on my Best of 2003 list. Call 314-535-1700 for ticket information.

There are still a few kinks to iron out in the new venue - trying to order a drink, for example, reminded me of that line in Tom Waits' “The Piano Has Been Drinking” about not being able to “find your waitress with a Geiger counter” - but on the whole it's nice to see this kind of material performed in a more appropriate setting than either the Sheldon Concert Hall proper or the Grandel Theatre were able to provide. Thanks to Mike Isaacson and Paul Reuter for keeping both faith and the Grand Center Cabaret. Long may the series endure.

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