Shawn Ryan
Shawn Ryan
Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, October 16, 2015
Reviewed by Rob Lester for Cabaret Scenes
Photo: Maryann Lopinto
Long time, no see. Mischievously audacious, happily campy scamp Shawn Ryan was in NYC, appeared in the annual Cabaret Convention, singing Vernon Duke, and later the same night sashayed a few blocks over to Don’t Tell Mama. He put up his Dukes (“Honey in the Honeycomb” was sweetly spicy) and other wares, wearing the same multi-hued outrageous suit, later changing to matching short pants. Like a little kid who’s king of the sandbox with his playmates in the park (in this case, the band led by Kelly Park), he’s giddy and in charge. You can imagine him as a kid in school, put in the corner for naughtiness: teasing classmates, giggling, cursing, pulling girls’ pigtails. Now he pulls your leg with comments, starting the most overdone cabaret songs, then stops cold, smiles and chuckles. He’s not gonna sing THAT!!! He wanted to see reactions. He teases the band, too, riffs on anything and everything and, when the mood strikes him, Ryan the rascal really sings. There was the story-song “Snow White” by Zoë Lewis about the Disneyland employee dressed as that so-sweet character, finally losing her temper with a brat, letting out an expletive not expected in S.W.’s vocabulary, but is common in S.R’s lexicon.
Wouldn’t it be surprising if he put innuendo in “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly”? No, it wouldn’t be…LOL. I’d hoped for more new material, having seen him as far back as 2005 trotting out some of his standbys, like Streisand’s snappy, snippets-of-standards-stuffed version of “Down with Love.” And I truly wish he didn’t shortchange his balladeer side as this class clown’s voice has more colors. However, for bravely flying by the seat of his brightly-colored pants, ya gotta rank him at the top of the class.
Category: Cabaret Reviews, New York City, New York City Cabaret Reviews
