Ray Rackham Theatrical has teamed up with famed NYC piano bar Marie’s Crisis, known for its group showtune sing-a-longs, to bring Marie’s Crisis Pop-Up Piano Bar to London for five nights only, October 30–November 3. The pop-up will take over the basement bar of legendary British gay pub The City of Quebec in Marylebone.
The New York venue was originally built in 1839 and is named for Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet, “The Crisis,” which followed up on the themes of his earlier “Common Sense,” which laid out, in logical terms, why America had to break from England. (“Marie” is Romany Marie, who was the proprietor of several tearooms in Greenwich Village in early 1900’s.) The piano bar occupies the place where the Revolutionary War author died in 1809—not in Marie’s Crisis, but in a small wood-framed house occupying the site before the brick building now housing the bar was constructed.
Marie’s Crisis London will open its doors in the refurbished basement bar of the City of Quebec pub, London’s oldest LGBTQ public house, where patrons will be transported to the Marie’s Crisis Cafe of Manhattan, complete with the New York team of performing pianists and singing bartenders. Singing pianists Kenney M. Green and Adam Michael Tilford from Marie’s in New York will head up the five night pop-up, along with singers and Marie’s regulars Randy Taylor and Jennifer Pace.
For more than four decades, Marie’s Crisis in New York’s West Village has hosted theatre fans for drinks and singalongs of showtunes old and new. The popular nightspot features a singing pianist with an extensive repertoire of Broadway favorites to lead the festivities seven nights a week. The London pop-up follows three yearly pop-up engagements in Sydney.
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