By Michael Portantiere***For about 13 years, the incredible force of nature that is Marilyn Maye performed annually at the Art House in Provincetown, Mass., under the aegis of producer Mark Cortale. Maye’s popularity in the town grew to the point where she was soon selling out that 127-seat venue for two-week runs each late summer. Indeed, her love affair with P-Town was such that she 
even did a show there in the summer of 2020—outdoors, for the first and only time—at pretty much the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
A big change came about two years ago, when Cortale was informed that his lease with the Art House would not be renewed, meaning that he would no longer be able to present Maye and other fabulous NYC headliners in that space. He pivoted gracefully and instead began booking his roster of stars into P-Town’s historic, 140-year-old Town Hall, with Maye debuting there last year at the tender age of 96 (!). Although this living legend was at first trepidatious about the change from the intimate Art House to Town Hall, which seats more than 700 people at capacity, her one-nighter there in 2024 was a triumph in every conceivable way, and she was thrilled to return this year on August 24 for what turned out to be another spectacular evening.
This show was an expanded version of the one Maye has offered in NYC at 54 Below and elsewhere as a tribute to Johnny Carson in the centenary year of his birth, an affectionate nod to the late-night TV host whose talk-variety show she graced with her presence 76 times — more than any other singer, as Maye points out proudly and frequently. (“Bob Hope was on the show more than I was, but he was a comedian,” she wryly observed at one point during the Town Hall set.) The evening began with a clip of Maye introducing the title song from the then-new musical Cabaret on the Carson show nearly 60 years ago, then segued into a live performance of that same iconic tune, delivered with vocal power and energy undiminished despite the passage of more than half a century.
The program at Town Hall was pretty much the same as this reviewer remembered it from 54 Below, but with several additions, most notably the Gladys Knight song “The Need to Be.” (Maye told how she and Knight befriended each other when they 
both worked in Las Vegas back in the day.) Other highlights, familiar and beloved from previous Maye outings, ranged from “The Song is You” to “No Bad News” (from The Wiz) to skillfully-crafted meldings of “Here’s That Rainy Day/Stormy Weather” and “Those Were the Days/I Will Survive.” (Now that Gloria Gaynor has been shunned by many of her former fans for her acceptance of a Kennedy Center honor following Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of that once highly-respected venue and producing organization, maybe Maye can claim “I Will Survive” as her own anthem?)
The rest of the song stack was so chock-full of wonders that this review can’t even come close to listing them all, but for the record, it did include a couple of the most frequently-requested items in MM’s repertoire: the two-minute long, one-act play song “Guess Who I Saw Today” (by Murray Grand and Elisse Boyd) and the show-stopping “Fifty Percent” from the musical Ballroom. Perhaps the most 
creative and effective melding of the evening was the classic Schwartz, Dietz number “(I’ll Go My Way) By Myself” into “Being Alive” from Stephen Sondheim’s Company, an unexpected combo that enriched both songs.
Town Hall’s perfect acoustics and excellent sight lines, aided and abetted by first-rate sound and lighting systems, flattered the brilliant work of Maye as well as her top-drawer musical director-pianist Tedd Firth, drummer Mark McLean and bassist Bruce Gertz. All in all, it was an unforgettable event.
Photos by Michael Portantiere
