By Bart Greenberg***Broadway babies Jenna Bainbridge and Danny Quadrino made their cabaret debuts at The Laurie Beechman Theatre on their night off from their current roles in Wicked, with a loosely organized show called It Takes Two. Both are adorable, enthusiastic 
and highly-talented individuals who have great friendship chemistry, evidenced in their giggling over private jokes and their give-and-take in the multiple duets in the show.
The gimmick for the evening was a bunch of cards posted on one of the side walls of the stage, with cute clues on them such as “Plant Daddy” and “Snow Day.” The audience shouted their choices (general cacophony) and then the card was uncovered and the title was revealed. As they did perform every one of the cards, it really didn’t affect the show at all. The singers each did a couple of solos drawn from their past repertoires. Pianist Paul Loesel kept up with the surprises with great equanimity and musical panache.
Among the highlights was the title tune by Stephen Sondheim, which allowed Bainbridge and Quadrino to show how well they listen to each other, the buoyant “What I’ve Been Looking For” (Adam Watts, Andy Dodd), which included a lot of giggling, and “Love Is An Open Door” (Kirsten Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez), which they gave a very personal twist to. A happy surprise was “Romeo and Juliet” (Dan Studney, Nathan Wang, David Manning) from Reefer Madness, probably the most obscure song of the evening. The number that brought out their strongest acting skills was also their dream roles, “Suddenly Seymour” (Alan Menken, Howard Ashman).
One of the major drawbacks of the evening was both singers’ reliance on lyric sheets on music stands throughout the show. This really serves to isolate them from the audience and to each other at times. The entire evening felt far more like a very casual party entertainment by very talented people rather than a polished cabaret show that the venue calls for.
