Chelsea Table + Stage hosts Tom Lehrer Is Alive and Well and Has Given Away All Rights to His Music on Thursday, June 26 at 7 PM. The show is written and performed by Andrew Lloyd Baughman and directed by Melissa Baughman.
Baughman uses a delightfully twisted framing device: he appears as Professor Charles Chucklenut (shook-el-nau), a deranged academic defending a dissertation on Lehrer’s ongoing relevance in our current age of absurdity. The show features nearly 20 of Lehrer’s iconic songs, including “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “National Brotherhood Week,” “I Wanna Go Back to Dixie” and “The Masochism Tango”—reviving the satirical genius of Tom Lehrer with modern urgency and no apologies.
Now 97, Tom Lehrer is a mathematician song-writer, who, in the 1950s began performing the satirical songs he had written, accompanying himself on the piano. In 1953, he released his first album, Songs of Tom Lehrer, and by 1959, when he released his second album, he was well-known. In the 1960s he wound down writing and performing; he ceased public appearances in 1974 and has turned down requests to reprise his performances of the 1960s. Lehrer went on to teach mathematics at UC-Santa Cruz until his retirement.
In 2020, Lehrer put out a statement saying that he had placed everything he ever wrote in the public domain.
There is a $25 food/beverage minimum. For more information and tickets, click here.
Chelsea Table & Stage is located at 152 West 26th Street New York, NY
