THE HANGOVER REPORT – Broadway leading man SANTINO FONTANA charms his way through his solo 54 Below debut

Santino Fontana performs at 54 Below.

Last night, I was back at 54 Below to catch the opening night of Broadway leading man Santino Fontana’s new cabaret act. Mr. Fontana’s show — his first solo act at the revered theater district cabaret venue — is nothing if not an utterly charming and diverting night out. The premise of the show is deceptively simple — over the course of the 75-minute evening, audience members randomly choose numbers out of a box, each of which represents a song from a pool of 25 numbers, of which Mr. Fontana sings about half.

That means that each performance can vary greatly from night to night (Mr. Fontana will be performing the show again at 54 Below on November 18 and 20), a challenge which the Tony-winning star dealt with with ample charism and appealing looseness. In fact, it was this sense of unpredictability and spontaneity that lent the evening wonderful night life vitality. Throughout, the Tootsie and Cinderella star — not to mention the star of the television series Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — was completely in the moment, his impromptu banter and lively storytelling (namely vignettes involving James Earl Jones and Ryan Gisling) invariably on point. Accompanied only by a piano, Mr. Fontana was in robust voice (as always) as he crooned his way through about a dozen or so songs, a majority of them from “golden age” Broadway musicals. 

At the performance I attended, Rodgers and Hammerstein were well represented (e.g., “Ten Minutes Ago” and “Do I Love You Because You’re Beautiful” from Cinderella, “If I Loved You” from Carousel). The title song of She Loves Me, an amusing reconception of “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story, “How to Handle a Woman” from Camelot, and an unmiked “They Were You” from The Fantasticks rounded out the other Broadway standards. Perhaps most emotionally affecting was Mr. Fontana’s clarion rendition of “Dear Ophelia” from the early Menken and Ashman gem God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. Oddly, Tootsie’s Dorothy Michaels only made a single brief appearance in a very funny one-man version of “Love Is an Open Door” from Frozen. The stage and screen star also struck comic gold basking in the raucous innuendo of “Making Love Alone”.

RECOMMENDED

SANTINO FONTANA
Cabaret
54 Below
1 hour, 15 minutes (without an intermission)
November 14, 18, and 20

Categories: Cabaret, Music, Other Music

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