Cheyenne Jackson and Jane Krakowski in ‘Damn Yankees’ at City Center’s Encores. Photo: Joan Marcus.
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By Jonathan Warman
Friday, July 11, 2008
With the transfer of last summer‘s “Gypsy” to a multi-Tony-winning Broadway run, City Center’s Encores is all too happy to continue its Summer Stars series with “Damn Yankees.” Designed on a modest scale like all Encores productions, this “Damn Yankees” is, happily, a perfectly good revival of a perfectly charming old-fashioned musical.
“Yankees” follows a passionate baseball fan Joe Boyd, who sells his soul to a devil named Applegate (Sean Hayes of “Will & Grace” fame in his NYC stage debut) in order to help his home team, the Washington Senators, beat out the Yankees for the pennant. Middle-aged, doughy Joe Boyd is transformed into young Joe Hardy (the appropriately studly Cheyenne Jackson), who can knock the ball out of the park every time. When Joe starts missing his old life (and wife), Applegate brings in sexy Lola (Jane Krakowski), who tries to seduce Joe, singing the show’s biggest hit "Whatever Lola Wants.”
Hayes delivers a performance rife with the comic timing and witty physicality he’s known for, as well as some virtuoso piano playing.
“Damn Yankees” was one of choreographer Bob Fosse’s earliest turns on Broadway, and Mary McLeod has lovingly reproduced it. What later would be known as his signature style only turns up in “Lola” and the mambo-inflected “Who’s Got the Pain?” and Krakowski delivers that Fosse pizzazz with aplomb. Veanne Cox brings her usual comic brilliance in the small role of Senators fan Sister.
Queer heartthrob Jackson, however, is the real reason to see the show; the out and proud actor is thoroughly convincing as romantic leading man Joe. With Paulo Szot knocking ’em dead in “South Pacific,” we now have two very handsome gay men sending the city’s matinee ladies into swoons. Take a note, Hollywood!
“Damn Yankees,” 7 p.m. Tue. & Sun., 8 p.m. Wed. Sat. and 2 p.m. Sat. & Sun. at New York City Center, 130 W. 55th St., $25–$110, 212-581-1212, nycitycenter.org.
CAPATHIA JENKINS
From the handful of times I’ve seen Capathia Jenkins in action, I’m beginning to think she can do no wrong—artistically speaking. She came to most people’s attention singing “Stop the Show” to great effect in “Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me” actually doing what the songs title suggests.
Since I’m reviewing something else—her cabaret act with singer-songwriter Louis Rosen—I can finally mention how transcendent she was playing Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Oscar (for “Gone With the Wind”) in the one-woman show “(mis)Understanding Mammy” (the show was presented by Emerging Artists Theatre, where I’m a company member, so reviewing the show would have been a conflict of interest).
This new cabaret act isn’t perfect, but when Jenkins is cooking, she lights up the room. Her voice is a simply amazing. In Martin Short’s show, she belted like nobody’s business; here, she mostly sings Rosen’s smoother settings of the poems of Nikki Giovanni (a writer recently chosen as one of Oprah Winfrey’s “Living Legends”), and it takes on a liquid sweetness that’s irresistible.
Rosen is definitely a good composer, with a gift for melody and texture that compliments Jenkins exceptionally well. That said, when the spotlight is on him, he’s just an OK singer with an uncertain stage presence. Giovanni’s words by and large are potently evocative, but some of them make awkward lyrics.
When the parts don’t gel, it can try your patience. When they do, however, this act is as good as anything Phoebe Snow or Joan Armatrading did, and that’s tremendous.
“Capathia Jenkins and Louis Rosen, One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs,” 7 p.m. Tue. at Iridium Jazz Club, 1650 Broadway, $20 w/ $10 food/drink minimum, 212-582-2121, iridiumjazzclub.com.
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