A Tough Sell

Suzanne Somers didn’t come to Broadway to win a Tony Award — and, don’t worry, she won’t. The Queen of the Home Shopping Network came to the Great White Way to sell her one-woman show The Blonde in the Thunderbird.

While we can all agree that the word “business” is part of “show business,” the idea is to sell some form of art to the audience. Somers is just selling business; there is no art here. Yet she has an audience that bears a great deal of affection for her — whether from her five year stint on TV’s Three’s Company, her best selling books, or that Home Shopping Network familiarity. At the end of the performance that we saw, Somers received a standing ovation even though the crowd’s response during the 95 minute show had been rather tepid.

In retrospect, we realized that the ovation made perfect sense. Somers’ public is a TV audience, not a theater audience. They sat back and watched the show as TV viewers do, then they justified the cost of their tickets by giving the star a standing ovation. To do less would have meant that they had made a bad purchase — and, on Broadway, there are no returns.

But trust us: The only thing that makes this a Broadway show is the fact that it’s being performed in a Broadway theater. You may be expecting a poor man’s version of Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays, but what you’ll get is a Lifetime TV movie on a bad acid trip. The Blonde in the Thunderbird is the strangest, weirdest, conglomeration of contemporary schlock you will ever see on Broadway (we hope). Part celebrity confessional, part dramatized self-help tome, and part Las Vegas lounge act, its only saving grace is that Somers has considerable charisma — and great hair.

How bizarre is this show? When Somers tells a story about her father tearing up her prom dress in an alcoholic rage, she punctuates the tale with the song “Take Back Your Mink” from Guys and Dolls, so wildly inappropriate that one simply can’t believe she thinks it’s a good idea. A terrible, way-over-the-top arrangement of “Fifty Percent” gives a weird melodramatic weight to the tale of her liaison with Alan Hamel, the married man who would later become her husband (and the producer of this future footnote to the 2005-06 Broadway season).

Some of the songs are special material written expressly for Somers by the writers/directors of the show, Mitzie and Ken Welch. We presume that they were well paid. The sound design is dreadful, the set design is ugly — and, with two big TV screens employed, the show has the feeling of an industrial. In a way, that’s what it is: When she rolls out her Home Shopping Network wares at the show’s end, the sequence is 10 percent self-deprecating humor and 90 percent a reminder to tune in and take out your credit card.

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Bang The Drum Loudly

You arrive at Dodger Stages for Drumstruck and find your seat occupied — by a drum. It’s yours to play for the duration of the show. Talk about audience participation! Needless to say, this is one loud show; the title should be warning enough.

Volume aside, it’s a sort of African Drum 101 class with plenty of demonstrations. We found it simplistic and far too repetitive, but it certainly has plenty of energy, and it’s not too long. (That was a smart move.) The cast is talented and fun to watch. Still, the show is best suited to people who aren’t really interested in theater and/or don’t speak English; virtually all of the directions you receive from the stage for your own drumming are visual rather than verbal. In other words, this is a great show for tourists from overseas, and it was no doubt planned that way.

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Ailing No More

On Sunday nights, you could often find us at the piano bar at Danny’s Grand Seafood Palace on West 46th Street, because that’s the night when Scott Ailing sang there. Last Sunday, the place was packed like never before because it was Ailing’s last night at the piano bar before moving to Tampa. We found out about Ailing five years ago and have been enjoying his talent ever since, coming back to Danny’s week after week for our own personal pleasure.

His exquisite, soaring tenor voice was a tonic for the Sunday night blues. Ailing not only knows how to sing, he knows what to sing; his repertoire is heavily laced with show music but also includes opera and pop. No matter what the genre of music, there is always drama in his voice. We never heard a man sing “Defying Gravity” before Ailing, but his version doesn’t just fly — it rockets. When he really opens up at the end of the number, the notes are big, full, and electrifying.

Rick Leonard, Ailing’s gifted musical director/accompanist, will be behind the piano with singer Emelie Davis starting August 7, but it was no surprise that people were crying at the end of the evening on July 17. (Barbara’s eye make-up was a mess.) Ailing’s last song — the perfect choice — was Stephen Sondheim’s “Sunday.” To be sure, Sunday will never be the same without Scott Ailing.

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[To contact the Siegels directly, e-mail them at siegels@theatermania.com.]