The Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel

On Tuesday night we went to the Oak Room at the Algonquin to see our friend Loren Schoenberg appear with KT Sullivan and Mark Nadler. The Show, "Swell Party" was a Cole Porter review. It was absolutely wonderful - maybe the best cabaret we've seen (see NYT review below). They really have fun with the sexy lyrics, outfits to match the mood and interesting interpretations of the life of Cole Porter. We had seen this pair (without Loren) in Palm Beach at the Colony. The show there was based on the work of Dorothy Fields and while good, nothing like this. Picture sultry lyrics sung suggestively or teasingly by either of the pair, mix in some attitude from the sax and imagine piano and base in the background. There were songs new to us, but old favorites like "Begin the Begine", or "Oh, La, La, La, C'Est Magnifique" and one song following the next with hardly a breather in the entire 90 minute performance

The Algonquin Hotel is famous for the Algonquin Round Table in the 1920's that included a group of literary legends including Dorothy Parker, George S. Kaufman and Robert Benchley. The Oak Room is a small, intimate, venue that makes you feel like you're in a nightclub with Humphrey Bogart - except for the lack of smoke! This night we shared the space with the likes of Kitty Carlisle (yes, she LIVES), Tova Feldshu and others not quite so famous. We usually enjoy the repartee in Cabaret. This time there was little of that but the songs told the story. We were sitting about 3 feet from KT; it doesn't get better. Loren accompanied them on the saxophone and really added a whole new dimension to some of the songs.

You need to have dinner to get a decent table (it's a small room but there are still corners!). There's a limited fixed price menu, choices of steak, chicken, salmon, or pasta. Those in the 'know' ask for a 'popover' along with their bread basket. Salads are usually very good; desert includes ice cream and chocolate choices. Overall, the food is pretty good for a night club.

I believe they are sold out for the rest of the run, but if you're there for a drink, be nice to Kendall at the door and she might find a spot along the wall.

Cabaret Review 'A Swell Party'
They Skip the Bio and Cut to the Cole Porter Chase

By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: March 18, 2006
In the language of Cole Porter: oo-la-la-la! C'est magnifique!

That burst of Gallic joie describes the ebullience of "A Swell Party — R.S.V.P. Cole Porter," the truly fabulous Porter tribute winked, smirked, crooned and shouted by K T Sullivan and Mark Nadler at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel. A departure from the team's zany tutorials on luminaries of the great American songbook, "A Swell Party" skips the biographical part to deliver songs both famous and obscure, in a delirious whoosh of lubricious exuberance.
Imparting the composer's live-for-the-moment-of-passion philosophy, Ms. Sullivan and Mr. Nadler suggest a very ripened Botticelli Venus squired by Danny Kaye, freshly reincarnated as a hyperkinetic piano man visiting from vaudeville heaven. A valuable new addition to their act, the saxophonist Loren Schoenberg injects instrumental comedy into "Let's Do It," by deflating the phrase sung as "let's fall in love" by inflecting it with a corny vibrato; no, the song is definitely not about love. Later he returns for a husky insinuating solo of "Begin the Beguine" in which the singers and the bassist John Loehrke join him to evoke an image of an ocean liner swimming in Champagne at 4 a.m.

Beneath the brilliantine surface of Porter's lyrics, everything is sexual. The only times his double-entendres fade into the background is during sighs of besotted yearning and cries of rapture. Only then does lust turn into the kind of love that's "too hot not to cool down."
"A Swell Party" probably has more showstoppers than any other cabaret show this season. Here are two: After taking "Kate the Great," an editorial brief for nymphomania that offers Catherine the Great as a role model ("she made the butler/ she made the groom/ she made the maid who made the room"), Mr. Nadler astutely observes that the song describes how Porter might have ruled Russia.

The giddiest of Ms. Sullivan's several turns as erotic philosopher is a swiveling, eye-rolling "Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love," which warns all gals: "So just remember when you get that glance/ A romp and a quickie/ Is all little Dickie/ Means/ When he mentions romance."
There's more, much more where that came from in a show that reminds you that half the pleasure of excess is finding the perfect words to describe it.

"A Swell Party - R.S.V.P. Cole Porter" remains through April 1 at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, 59 West 44th Street, Manhattan, (212) 419-9331.