Noel Marie: The ABC’s of Broadway
Starring Noel Marie
Musical Direction by Chris Leavy
April 15, 2021
Winter Park Playhouse, Winter Park, FL
by Carl F.Gauze
With so many excellent tunes to select from the past century of Broadway, where do you begin? Alphabetical is an option, and Ms. Marie begins by serenading us with “Anything Goes” from “42nd Street.” Tonight it’s the show title that gets alphabetized, not the musical number, so we cover material from “Jesus Christ Superstar” with “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” to “Suddenly, Seymore” from “Little Shop of Horrors” to a song from “Quilters” that I failed to write down.
-bm How rare is a production of “Quilters”? I’ve seen it once at Theater Downtown about twenty five years ago. Talk about your obscurities. But most of the show was packed with tunes you almost certainly know: “Johnny One Note” and “What Lola Wants” and “Easter Parade.” As Ms. Marie’s hour wrapped up, we had only gotten to the letter “S”, so the ending was a bit frenetic. And as we all know from Fringe Festival: You gotta make your time or they drop the curtain on you. This was a wonderful time and I was lucky enough to see it live, but it is available on the WPPH site for post-show viewing. Orlando is coming back to life, and here’s one more vital sign.
