By SHARON EBERSON
Laura Benanti never once said, “Hello, Pittsburgh!” Nor did she mention a sports team during her second show at the Greer Cabaret Monday night. Instead, the self-proclaimed “pathological people pleaser” determined to make a personal connection with each and everyone of us lucky enough to be in her presence, and did she ever.
If anything, those of us who entered as fans, left still starstruck, and feeling like we’d made a new friend.
The Broadway star’s vocal range and control were in tip-top shape to hit high notes such as the famously towering one in Vanilla Ice Cream from She Loves Me. As a storyteller, her comedic gifts and confessional anecotes were on marquee display as well.
I attended the late show, her second of the night, part of a spectacular Broadway-centric Trust Cabaret Series lineup.
in person in Pittsburgh on October 14, 2024, to open the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Cabaret season.
Benanti is the winner of one Tony (as Louise in the 2008 Gypsy revival) and a five-time nominee – party of her own tongue-in-cheek introduction. She then strolled onto the Greer stage, as if incredulous about the time of night.
“Do you know it’s 9:30?,” she began. “Are we all on cocaine?”
No. Just feeding off some heavy-duty Laura Benanti energy, thank you very much.
With longtime accompanist Todd Almond, she opened with a 15-minute version of Eliza’s track in My Fair Lady, a role she coveted but did not get to play on Broadway until she turned 40, just five years ago.
Benanti made her Broadway debut at age 18, understudying the marvelous Rebecca Luker as Maria in The Sound of Music. Later, you may recall, she played Elsa Schrader in The Sound of Music Live for television audiences, but the story she told Pittsburghers was of that nervous teenager, making her Broadway debut.
Along with being a people-pleaser, Benanti’s other life/career themes for her cabaret included “recovering ingénue,” twice divorced and happily married, devoted mother and musical theater lover.
What emerged as Benanti told her stories and sang songs was a musical theater gladiator, who meets challenges head-on, with a whole lot of talent and a whole lot of humor.
Benanti’s mother gave up an acting and singing career to raise two girls and become a vocal coach to celebrities including her awkward daughter – Benanti displays a giant photo of herself to illustrate that she was an “old soul.” She could spout facts about musicals and had a love of Sondheim that did not necessarily wow the kids at the playground.
While playing Cinderella in the 2002 revival of Into the Woods, she was required to do a “pratfall” – a fall, on purpose. She broke her back, requiring surgery and a determination to get back onstage.
Which she did.
Benanti returned to the stage as Claudia in Nine, still wearing a neck brace and stationed in an impossible fifth-floor dressing room. Her costar, the late Chita Rivera, who graced the same Greer stage in 2022, took care of that problem and was kind and encouraging throughout the run.
Benanti’s deeply felt gratitude was evident in a heartfelt rendition of Claudia’s Unusual Way.
Are you wiping away tears? It wasn’t the only time in 80 minutes that would happen to me. Yet Benanti is so self-deprecating, so confessional in her storytelling about the potholes she has climbed out of along the way, the laughs kept on coming as well.
She may be best known by non-Broadway audiences for her comedic impression of Melania Trump on Late Night With Stephen Colbert. Her version of Melania made an appearance at the Greer on Monday, after Benanti asked us to express our approval (she got it, overwhelmingly), and listing, sincerely, what she admires about the former First Lady.
With Almond, Benanti has written a show called Nobody Cares, which is how she talks about her television career – Nashville on ABC, Hulu’s Life & Beth, TV Land’s Younger, and the second season of HBO Max’s The Gilded Age.
I care, I care.
Any chance to watch Benanti at work is time well spent.
Besides musical theater selections including the title song of The Sound of Music, the mother of Louisa and Ella, sang a composition written with Almond, aptly titled, country-tinged Mama’s A Liar. Any parent can relate to protecting children with a lie, with one exception: when it comes to love.
We could be here all day if you want me to list reasons to love a Benanti performance, including her conversation with a 16-year-old aspiring performer in the audience who cried, “I want to be just like you.”
To which the former ingénue, obviously humbled and breaking into tears herself, replied, “Just don’t get married as many times as I have.”
The last time I saw Laura Benanti in concert was in my living room, at the height of the COVID shutdown, in 2020. Along with Patti LuPone and Vanessa Williams, she was part of the Live From the West Side: Women of Broadway series of pay-per-view concerts that was an oasis during the pandemic.
What a thrill, then, to see her in a nightclub setting, in the heart of the Downtown Cultural District, with friends and fellow musical theater lovers. Before she left the Greer stage on Monday night, Benanti thanked the audience for supporting local theater, which endeared her to me just as much as hitting all those glorious high notes on a two-show night in Pittsburgh.
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