Seth Rudetsky: Seth’s Big Fat Broadway
Seth Rudetsky
Seth’s Big Fat Broadway
Feinstein’s at the Nikko, San Francisco, CA, September 13, 2014
Reviewed by Steve Murray for Cabaret Scenes
Seth Rudetsky brought his brilliant tour-de-force “deconstruction” show to his rabidly devoted San Francisco fans who get his material and appreciate each and every reference and acerbic quip. The deconstructions work like this: a clip of a vocal is either amazingly good or amazingly bad. The clip is dissected, played back with Rudetsky lip-synching to hilarious conclusions. No one is exempt from his rapier wit, from Barbra Streisand transposing consonants in lyrics, then accentuating the change, to Bea Arthur doing an angry line reading finish to “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” which is cut off by an over-anxious conductor.
Rudetsky, a precocious theater addict from birth, knows music in depth and chooses hilarious examples for his well-thought-out categories. There’s riffing, where singers change the melody for better or worse, “what are you wearing?,” “what were you thinking?” and the use and overuse of vibrato and high belting. Clips also included: Janis Paige singing flat; Cher’s horrific solo re-creation of West Side Story; Liza Minnelli singing a funk/high soprano rendition of “Dancing in the Moonlight”; Patti LuPone’s Evita (great) versus Madonna’s (bad); and Betty Buckley (amazingly great sustained E).
Rudetsky’s attention to musical minutiae, combined with his astute musicianship, makes for a thoughtful, always hysterical romp through exactly what we theater and pop music aficionados have thought all along. He has found a unique and highly entertaining way of pointing out the obvious, and I haven’t laughed as hard in a show in years.
Category: Cabaret Reviews, Regional, San Francisco, San Francisco Cabaret Reviews
