Thursday, May 10, 2018

Live from Lincoln Center: Stephanie J. Block


This is my favorite of the Lincoln Center concerts so far, which is interesting since I’m a lot more familiar with both Sutton Foster and Leslie Odom Jr. than Stephanie J. Block.  She of course played Trina in my very beloved Falsettos revival, but while I’d been aware of other things she’s done (I knew she was a former Elphaba, and I remembered that she played Liza Minelli in The Boy from Oz,) Falsettos is still the only work of hers that I really know.

But despite Foster and Odom’s home-field advantage in my brain, Block just knocked my socks off.  It helped that so many of her song choices were right up my alley.  As I’ve said, I can of course still enjoy concerts that mostly feature songs I don’t know, and I’ve discovered some wonderful songs from random YouTube videos of my Broadway faves performing them.  But when they’re songs I know, there’s just that instant connection, that knee-jerk excitement as soon as you hear the opening notes, and plenty of Block’s tastes aligned very nicely with mine.

Like Sutton Foster’s, this concert was filmed to include the between-song comments, and as amazing as Block’s powerful voice was, this aspect of it might have been her strongest asset of all.  Because this was an incredibly well-crafted concert, in which Block told the story of her life and career through songs connected by her own overarching narrative.  She had great anecdotes – funny, honest, and sweet – and every song was chosen for a carefully pinpointed reason.

She opened with “Some People” from Gypsy, remembering her star turn as Momma Rose back in high school.  In discussing her arrival in New York and realizing what a cruel mistress the city could be, she sang “What is it about Her?” from The Wild Party, which I thought was just an inspired interpretation for that song.  She commemorated the MGM musicals that sparked her love for performing with two Judy Garland numbers, “I Don’t Care” from The Good Old Summertime and “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

Like Leslie Odom Jr., Block had one guest – her husband, actor Sebastian Arcelus.  She led into his introduction with the one-two Streisand punch of both “My Man” and “The Music that Makes Me Dance,” then brought him out to sing “Move On” from Sunday in the Park with George.  This is a number I’d heard Block perform before, but this time, she gave her husband Dot’s part and she sang the role of George.  First, that’s some definite generosity, since Dot has most of the “meat” of the song, but I also loved her reasoning for it, that she often finds herself discouraged with the business and that Arcelus is the one who continually encourages her and brings her back.

There were a few songs in her set that I wasn’t familiar with, but I really liked all of them.  She dedicated “Woman” from Boublil and Schönberg’s The Pirate Queen to her young daughter, and she ended the show with an Ahrens and Flaherty number I’d never heard before as a plea for us to “love harder” in these unkind times.  She also sang a song called “Gotta Start Small,” which doesn’t appear to be from a musical or by anyone that I’ve heard of, but which I enjoyed quite a lot.

And when it came to those iconic songs that everyone was waiting to hear, Block delivered wholeheartedly.  She performed the hell out of “I’m Breaking Down” from Falsettos (the audience went nuts,) and toward the end, she blew the roof off with “Defying Gravity.”  Overall, just a phenomenal show from an extremely talented singer, dedicated performer, and charismatic entertainer.

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