It's been ten years since Michael Feinstein put his name on the Loews Regency breakfast room so it could be converted at night into a world-class night club by a partial rearrangement of tables and chairs and also by means of two signs hanging from sconces flanking a podium.
The result: Feinstein's at Loews Regency is now as permanent a fixture at the swanky Upper Eastside hotel as those sconces. It has dutifully served as home base for any number of top-flight performers, not the least of which was Feinstein's great pal, Rosemary Clooney, and--get this--nonagenarians Kitty Carlisle Hart and Tony Martin.
But changes do occur over a decade, and a good guess would be that at the moment the economy is dictating the room's very noticeable policy alterations. Come the new year when, among others, headliners Tyne Daly, Betty Buckley and Marilyn Maye (in a definitely belated room bow) arrive, a somewhat more affordable price structure will be in effect.
But already the sign of the times is apparent in Michael Feinstein's appearances. It used to be the fellow whose name hangs from signs on those podium-flanking sconces showed up no more than twice a year. Not so this 12-month. Wearing a sharp suit or tuxedo, he's strode in on three occasions--each time paired with a snazzy partner. First, it was Cheyenne Jackson, then Christine Ebersole and, all this holiday season, Emmy- and Tony-winning David Hyde Pierce.
The successive--and extraordinarily successful--duo acts may have come about because those in charge know that Feinstein regularly fills the room but perhaps wouldn't if presented too often on his own. Whatever the strategy's origins, the results continue to be delightful, the very essence of highest quality night-club entertainment.
(Please note the use of "night-club" rather than "cabaret," if only because the former term and not the latter can be argued to have more attraction for wider audiences. But this is cabaret, all right, and nothing to be embarrassed about when someone like Feinstein embodies it.)
Making his formidable night-club debut, Pierce has the air of a third Smothers Brother--had Tom and Dick grown up with an intellectual sibling they thought too hoity-toity for their stand-up efforts. He's completely relaxed on stage, ready to shoulder his part of the breezy throwaway patter, and he's quick with the ad libs. It may or may not have been scripted that in pointing out Feinstein's Jewish background and his WASP upbringing, he called his colleague "circumcised" and himself "circumspect." Also, and no small matter, Pierce has a resonant baritone-bass that doesn't come as a total surprise after his stints in the one-word-titled musicals Spamalot and Curtains.
Speaking of Spamalot, he reprises the tuner's 11 o'clock number about show-biz's Jewish influence, "You Won't Succeed on Broadway," with all the sly aplomb he marshaled on the Shubert Theatre boards. It's his amusing tip of the yarmulke to Hanukkah. Earlier with crisp movements, he chugs merrily through "Penny in My Pocket," the cute-as-can-be but cut-from-the-show ditty Jerry Herman wrote for Horace Vandergelder to sing in Hello, Dolly!. And he sallies through the gleefully complex piece of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann special material tagged "Ill Wind" and set to Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 in E flat.
That Pierce has something of a Noel Coward polish about him may have dictated the jaunty opening number, Coward's "Together With Music," which Coward himself popularized with Mary Martin on their 1955 Together With Music CBS special. (Incidentally, Coward's never-mentioned middle name is Pierce. So there.) And he extends that Coward-like affinity to the so-many-lyrics "You're the Top" (Cole Porter's handiwork, of course) that he splits with Feinstein. Incidentally, there are some amusing seasonal updates in this one that the two romp through.
Though Pierce is the revelation in the pairing, it by no means suggests that Feinstein isn't his usual deft self, totally in his element. Once again, he showcases his two voices--the dulcet at-the-piano approach on "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (which he wrongly attributes to Hugh Martin only, when Ralph Blane is equally credited) and the big-band vocalese on which he's relatively become adept on "A Lot of Livin' to Do" and the Anthony Newley-Leslie Bricusse musical question, "What Kind of Fool Am I?" And what about the even more recently discovered acting talent he exhibits on that hortatory "Fool" item!
By the way, since Pierce is a self-outed gay man--as are Feinstein and Jackson--there's a subtle nod to same-sex unions from Pierce. He sings the little-known lullaby, "Your Face," that John Curtains Kander wrote for his partner many years back. No other comment is made, but the comment is made.
In the saving-best-for-last department: The four-handed Feinstein-Pierce rendition of Scott Joplin's "Maple Leaf Rag" as encore. Wowie-zowie!