By Marilyn Lester***It’s too bad Cole Porter isn’t around to add another verse to “You’re the Top,” for it would surely laud the partnership of Jeff Harnar and Alex Rybeck as the top in cabaret. Their Blame It on My Youth: Our 1980’s Don’t Tell Mama Songbook was performed before an enthralled audience in an overstuffed main room at the venue where “it” all started, and the gathered friends and colleagues went absolutely bonkers—who could not?
This first of four shows (every Thursday in February) celebrated the partnership of vocalist Harnar and pianist-arranger-music director Rybeck, which began in 1983. But there was an admission: before their 1987 debut show at Don’t Tell Mama, honored by opener, “The Sweetest Sounds” (Richard Rodgers) and “Say Yes” (John Kander, Fred Ebb), the pair had been playing at venues from back in the day, such as Palsson’s and others, all of them gone now, along with 11 PM and midnight cabaret shows.
Since Blame It on My Youth is a memory piece, there were tales to be told, a history to recount. It was spellbinding. Harnar is a master storyteller in word and song. His beautifully-constructed narratives are always smart and witty and imbued with native charm. As a college student at NYU to his cracking the cabaret world, the many gigs as a waiter-singing waiter were told with self-effacing hilarity, especially his two-year turn as an assistant to vocalist and celebrity Phyllis McGuire : “Just a Housewife/“Just a Houseboy” (Craig Carnelia/
Jeff Harnar) and “Ooh! My Feet” (Frank Loesser, additional lyrics Jeff Harnar). And so the stories went…
But while Harnar may have been front and center on stage, the other half of this partnership, Alex Rybeck, at the piano cannot be denied his importance as musical support and creative collaborator. His brilliant pianism is accompanied by an equally skillful talent for arranging. Case in point: for a story about Harnars Los Angeles aunt’s player piano, his accompaniment for “That Old Piano Roll” (Stephen Sondheim, cut from Follies) was both modern as it emulated the sound of thos old-time instruments. Rybeck is also a composer and his “Why Did You Have to Split?” (Rybeck, Seth Friedman) about the many-personalitied Sybil, was hilarious and delivered with perfect timing.
A big chunk of the story included the late composer, lyricist, musical director, pianist and pivotal figure in cabaret, Brian Lasser. Lasser was Karen Mason’s music director for 15 years; the introduction was made when Mason attended one of their shows. In a tribute to the friendship that ensued, Harnar sang a seamless medley of Lasser-arranged tunes: “Where is Love?” (Leslie Bricusse), “If That Was Love” (Bob Merrill) and a brilliant “Nowhere Man” (John Lennon).Lasser the composer was honored with “Bein
g With Me (is No Picnic)” (lyric by Michael Leeds) and “What I Saw.”
There is an invaluable third partner in the Rybeck-Harnar collaboration and that is their director from the beginning, the MAC and Bistro award-winning educator, director Sara Louise Lazarus, who has had one foot firmly planted in theater and the other in cabaret. Rybeck suggested that Harnar take one of her classes, wherein he learned the folly of singing age-inappropriate songs: “Blame It on My Youth” (Oscar’s Levant). And of course, what cabaret memoir would be complete without the inclusion of Donald Smith, a promient publicist who founded the annual Cabaret Convention. Moving toward the end of a glorious evening, circling back to the foundational theme of those early dates at Don’t Tell Mama, Harnar sang a flawless medley of “Home Again” (Carole King, arrangement Lasser and Rybeck), “Homeward Bound” (Paul Simon, arrangement Lasser and Rybeck) and “You’re My Home ” (Billy Joel, arrangement Lasser and Rybeck).
For performers and denizens of cabaret, the matter of the encore has often become a “wait for it!” moment…i.e. the false departure and return. Harnar, with characteristic wit, announced “your cover charge includes an encore” and with that, offered a beautiful “There Is a Time” (Charles Aznavour, English lyric Jeff Davis, Gene Lees). Is it any wonder no one wanted to leave the room? A standing ovation had to do.
