|
|
| |
|
|
| |
 |
|
| |
The night was stormy and unseasonably cool for Miami Beach. But
then, why not? That Mistress of Seduction, Joey Arias, was in
town, starring with her salaciously delicious partner in crime,
Sherry Vine, in SINsational, their globetrotting cabaret
show. The wind whipped the palms, as well as the flaps of the
Spiegeltent. Inside the mirror-slathered Salon Perdu, the
audience was a veritable composite of Miami Beach café society:
Mr. Miami Beach George Neary, Octavio Campos, Dale Stine,
Edison Farrow, Nestor Paz—all of us soaking up the torchy
ambiance in a spiegeltent where the likes of Marlene Dietrich
had once performed.
Oh, weren’t we all so smart to have let that largest gay cruise
in history sail away without us? For while the gay cruise was
away, two of New York’s best had come down to the Beach to
play. And suddenly, there they were, in all their Kit Kat Club
finery, in front of a bank of absinthe green lights: Joey Arias
and Sherry Vine, as Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly, singing “All
That Jazz.” Or “all that jizz”—as Joey had it, making certain
that we understood the kind of night we were in for. Nothing
was too raunchy for these girls: they’ve been around. Or as
Sherry explained early on, “I’m just a dirty cheap Jewish blonde
whore from New York.”
Legends in their own time, stars of Broadway and Cirque de
Soleil, as well as the dearly loved Bar d’O, these two had
performed SINsational in Sydney and Berlin, but it had
been years since they’d last performed together, in Miami—and as
Vine said with a wink and a smile, “Thanks for the warm hand on
our opening.” Mistresses of deadpan delivery, both of them.
Lest one imagine, however, that this was your run-of-the-mill dq
show, with snappy dq repartee, there’s the matter of That
Voice. And when Arias took his verse of that Johnny Mercer
chestnut, “Day In Day Out,” the mood was set. Beloved for his
channeling of Billie Holiday, Arias possesses an instrument that
rewinds time, back to the days when 52nd Street was
Swing Alley, “the street that never sleeps.”
But first, it was Sherry Vine’s show—while Arias took a powder.
No timid nightingale herself, Vine ripped into “When You’re Good
To Mama,” like she was auditioning for Kander and Ebb—followed
by a tune of her own, a raucous mash-up of all those “Milkshake”
derivatives called “So Delicious.” And if that weren’t enough,
she had the audience in hysterics with her riff on Madonna’s
“Jump,” renamed “Bump,” and which included the lyric, “Just one
little bump. I’m ready to bump.”
With her hourglass figure and Balanchine legs, Vine’s the kind
of statuesque bombshell who might well have been the model for
Jessica Rabbit, but it was her ability to wring laughter from a
line as mundane as “Ernie, it’s DELICIOUS” that made
comparisons to Lucille Ball almost inevitable. Possessed of the
same gift for physical comedy, and every bit as gorgeous, Vine
made the audience hers merely by saying, “I’m having a Tyra
moment” or “When you’re ready, baby, stick it in.” And ever
gracious, she knew when to cede the spotlight—to THAT VOICE.
A vision in black satin, there she was: Joey Arias in the room’s
center. One blue spot, mike in hand, singing “You’ve Changed.”
No, not just singing it—living it, and making those lyrics
personal, evoking not only Billie Holiday, and all of Holiday’s
disappointments, but our own heartbreaks as well: "I can't
understand/You've changed/You've forgotten the words/‘I love
you’” That sensual voice, tortured by love—before she was off
again, regaling us with tales of Cole Porter’s sexploits with
sailors, which provided fresh illumination into her version of
Porter’s “Love For Sale.”
Not to be outdone by Vine’s spontaneity with the audience,
Arias, too, reached into the front row—and pulled up Paul from
Miami. A straight man, whose girlfriend had conveniently
disappeared into the bathroom, Paul proved the perfect foil for
Arias’s antics, which included the insertion of her microphone
deep into the nether regions of Paul’s pants, whereupon Arias
sang to Paul’s crotch, that rough and breathy voice circling
around Spiegeltent. Oh, Billie, oh, Marlene—surely the girls
above were shrieking with laughter as loud as the rest of us.
And when Vine returned to sing “That Old Black Magic” with
Arias, it was indeed magical. For their finale, the two of them
ripped into “All of Me,” trading epithets and sobriquets like
tennis pros acing each other, singing with barely-contained
laughter “Mistress of the Dark” and “Queen of the Internet,”
“Blond Jewish Whore” and “Aztec Goddess”—until the two of them
were prostrate on the circular stage, singing cheek to cheek,
their obvious affection and respect for each other undeniable
and generous.
To see these two sharing a stage was to be grateful for the
legends that have preceded them—whose gifts Vine and Arias have
received, revived and transformed into their own sui generis
entertainment. SINsational could hardly be more
apt—although the real sin would be in missing this audacious
show. |
|
| |
|
|
|
