By Andrew Poretz***There really is no one quite like Storm Large. Her name is real, and she lives up to it. She has a larger-than-life presence (tall, quite fit), with a big voice (though soft as a pussycat when called for). She is stunningly beautiful, yet entirely open, vulnerable and approachable, and she can also curse l
ike a sailor—or like a modern-day Carole Lombard. If Storm Large were a song come to life, she’d be Billy Joel’s “She’s Always a Woman.” Plus, she can deftly switch between rock, pop, blues and theater songs. By all accounts, she’s certainly “earned her degree.”
Large’s latest appearance at 54 Below was somewhat different than previous shows. The high-octane performer was, for her, subdued. She was accompanied by only her longtime pianist and collaborator, James Beaton (she usually has a band). Large took to a stool for many songs, occasionally reading lyrics or notes and also went into long, seemingly free-associative stories between songs, though each ultimately segued into the next song or segment. These monologues might also have given Large time to recharge: she throws herself fully into every number, tearing your heart out when not making you laugh or think.
Wearing a form-fitting emerald green gown that complemented her blonde hair as well as her many tattoos on her back and arms, Large opened with “The Boys of Summer” (Don Henley). She added her own lyrics in the second verse with hilarious references to the Fire Island crowd. Large offered a long riff on Ozzy 
Osbourne and his recent final performance, and performed his “Crazy Train” as her tip of the hat. From there, she performed a song quite passionately and dramatically in French, because, as she sad, “it makes me sound classy.” On “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” (James Brown, Betty Jean Newsome), Large channeled Janis Joplin, though her voice is far more attractive. As an apparent response she then offered a medley of the defiant “You Don’t Own Me” (John Madara, David White) with a companion X-Rated tune.
“For the people who are frightened,” she announced, “I’ll do a couple of proper theater songs,” revealing another side of the star. She chose Kurt Weill’s “Pirate Jenny” (The Threepenny Opera) because she too, she said, was once a maid in a hotel. Large performed this song with English lyrics, still retaining the feel of the song’s Weimar cabaret roots. Her acting, humor, expression and timing were impeccable even as she added her own salty language, throwing f-bombs around like candy. The star also sang “Maybe This Time” (John Kander, Fred Ebb) from the film version of Cabaret, a number she once performed (with some trepidation) in front of the film’s star, Liza Minnelli. Rising from the stool mid-song, she killed it with a goosebump-inducing close.
A mainstay of Large’s act is a fascinating deconstruction of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” 
in which she quite literally throws out the melody but keeps the words, transforming it into a minor-key creation that was more of a rock power ballad—perhaps a lost Jefferson Airplane song performed by Grace Slick. The powerful piece created a desperate, tortured kind of unrequited longing that might well have aligned with the closeted Porter’s life.
The show took yet another unexpected turn with the addition of surprise guest Jason Kravitz, an improvisational performer. Kravitz asked a random woman at a ringside table to read a recent short text from her phone. Using only those five words, with Beaton’s keen follow-along on the piano, Kravitz concocted a song on the spot, with Large joining in for a rather insane duet of trading made-up lines— tremendous fun. To close the show, Large brought out her ukulele for her own bawdy, hysterically funny composition, “Eight Miles Wide,” complete with audience singalong. When she called out “Just the men!,” it was impossible not to laugh when the many men in the audience sang, “My vagina is eight miles wide!” Large returned for an encore with another original, “Stand Up for Me,” which she wrote about marriage equality, earning a sustained standing ovation.
Photos by Andrew Poretz
