KT Sullivan's salute to the musical review

NEW YORK, March 25 (UPI) -- Once upon a time Broadway had its Ziegfeld Follies and George White's Scandals, and KT Sullivan is bringing them to life again in a cabaret act that has the zing and color of pink champagne.

Wearing a wasp-waist, off-the-shoulder black velvet gown and a feather boa, the blonde with the big sexy eyes, cupid's bow mouth, and creamy complexion is back at the Hotel Algonquin's Oak Room for an engagement that runs through March 30. She has titled her show with singer-pianist Larry Woodward "Scandals and Follies, 1902-1952."

Don't be fooled by Sullivan's look of bubble-head innocence mixed with Mae West come-hither attitude. She is a serious historian of popular musical history with a pliant lyric soprano that can range from torchy brightness to light opera froth. An evening with KT is both educational and full of delightful vocal surprises.

Sullivan, who hails from Boggy Depot, Okla., has had the honor of being voted Outstanding Female Vocalist by the Manhattan Association of Cabarets. She has worked steadily on stage and in clubs, as a guest star on television, and as a recording artist for more than a decade.

On Broadway she played Lorelei Lee in a revival of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" and opposite Sting in a revival of "The Threepenny Opera." The DRG label has just released her CD, "Live from Rainbow and Stars: In Other Words," featuring the love songs of composer Bart Howard, whose music she has combined with that of Noel Coward and Cole Porter in previous cabaret shows.

Shows of the Scandals and Follies type, relying on hit songs that were often topical and splendiferous staging that made up for lack of plot, hit their zenith in the 1920s and 1930s and died after a lingering illness with Leonard Sillman's "New Faces of 1968." There is an occasional attempt to revive this musical form, as in the case of the short-lived black revue "One Mo' Time" this season on Broadway, but it no longer seems to attract audiences.

Sullivan performs the work of dozens more composers, opening the show with a medley that reaches back as far as a song introduced by Lillian Russell, "Come Down, My Evening Star" from the 1902 revue "Twirly-Whirly," and includes Irving Berlin's "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody" from "Follies of 1919" and "Say It With Music" and "All Alone" from "The Music Box Revues" of the 1920s.

She plucks hits from other legendary shows with names like "The Little Show," "International Revue, "Scandals of '22," "Garrick Gaieties of 1926," "The Passing Show," "Great Temptations," "Nine-Fifteen Revue of 1930," and "The Greenwich Village Follies." As the dates indicate, many of these shows had annual editions that introduced a great deal of new talent to show business.

Sullivan sings "The Boston Beguine" from "New Faces of 1952," a show that marked the debut of Sheldon Harnick as a Broadway composer and Alice Ghostley as a comic performer. Many of these revue songs rely on humor, and Sullivan sings a hilarious Berlin song from "Follies of 1919" titled "You Can't Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea."

Prohibition was in the air, and this was Berlin's way of warning the nation against its evils.

The development of some composers is touched on by contrasting their early and later work as Sullivan does by singing Porter's staidly romantic "Old Fashioned Garden" of 1919" followed by Woodard, a baritone of polished vocal accomplishment, singing the same composer's sexually suggestive "I'm a Gigolo" of 1919.

She also makes allusion to the private lives of a few performers of notorious reputation, such as Libby Holman, when singing one of Holman's trademark numbers, Howard Dietz's "Moanin' Low" from "The Little Show" of 1929. Holman lived out her life under a cloud of suspicion that she shot and killed her tobacco heir husband, a mystery that only added to her box office allure.

Sullivan's magic is in switching character styles to fit each song rather than singing all the songs in the same mode, as many cabaret artists do because they want to have a distinctive style. Since she already has an established claim to star quality, she can afford to interpret the nostalgic songs she loves in the way they might have been originally presented by artists of the past without diminishing herself as an artist.

And by the way, Sullivan designed this show as a tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Algonquin's opening.