GAYLETTER

Raise a martini, grab your kerchief, and search for a sugar daddy, Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs, calls for all three. Debuting at Café Carlyle from June 2nd until June 13th for $100 a pop, Alan Cumming’s performance covers a slew of songs and personal stories from Billy Joel and Miley Cyrus to family trauma and emotional strife. Despite the seriousness intermingled with his theatrics, Cumming remains the provocative, occasionally insane pansexual you know and love.

Co-host of the latest Tony’s, Cumming is now joined on stage by a pianist, cellist, and drummer to entertain his increasingly intimate crowd. Covering Broadway and contemporary Pop alike, he runs the full, flaming gambit in his Cumming cabaret fashion. But if you haven’t yet picked up on the purpose of this post or the puns there in, let me lay it out flat: Cum, come, come to Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs before it’s too late.

$100-120, 8:45PM & 10:45PM, Café Carlyle, 35 East 76th Street at Madison Ave. New York, NY.  …

GAYLETTER last spoke with “Dancer and Lover of Sperm” Rebecca Patek during 2013, in an interview of the same name. After spending the afternoon researching and chatting with her, my crush on Rebecca is so intense that as a gay man I’m uncomfortable. But then, discomfort is what Patek usually serves — take her 2013 show Inter(a)nal f/ear, a blisteringly funny satirical dance-and-multimedia performance exploring her experience of being raped, or her newest piece, The Future Was Looking Better In The Past, running from May 20th to May 23rd at The Chocolate Factory.

The unnerving subject at the center of “Future…” is the “Leopold and Loeb” murders. Remember those? It was that one time in 1924 when super hot, super rich teenage homos Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb gave America the “trial of the century” when they murdered 14-year old fellow trust fund kid Bobby Franks with a chisel because, like, Friedrich Nietzsche and #übermensch and “just for kicks” really. Funny thing is — and in Patek’s sly hands it WILL be funny, whether we like it or not — both murderer Loeb and victim Franks were Rebecca’s cousins on her father’s side.

“I found out about the connection two years ago, and got obsessed with it,” Patek says. “The idea of exploring ‘tainted blood’ started as kind of joke, but then you do start to think about these family strains, and look for repeating patterns, and there’s something eerie about it.”

Do your family members have feelings about you doing this piece? …

I’ve Been to Sea Before reimagines Joni Mitchell’s heartbreaking travelogue, Blue, as an epic odyssey on the open ocean. You will get wet. You’ll probably fall off the boat. You may need to be rescued. There really is no way to prepare yourself for this spectacle, but it helps if you get in early, get comfortable, and order Martinis.

With a vibrant history as an actor & playwright performing in some of New York’s most eclectic venues, at long last, Salty Brine (the only 2 adjectives I use to describe oysters, btw) has taken up a well-deserved cabaret artist residency at The Red Room. Accompanied by 2 musical geniuses that move as seamlessly between their instruments as they do as supporting characters, you’d best hunker down for a performance that rocks wildly amongst the currents of the silly and sorrow. You’ll probably also leave feeling guilty about having only paid 10 bucks for a ticket. I haven’t laughed like that in a long time.

Imagining track lists as blueprints for evenings of musical mayhem, Salty and his exceptionally talented ensemble bring you the spectacular Living Record Collection Cabaret with a show every Wednesday night until April, 29th. Do yourself a favor and get on board. Oh, the door boy is a massive babe. Please get in touch.

$10, 8:00PM, The Red Room, 85 E. 4th St. NY, NY.

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There’s that saying, “You can take the Queen out of Appalachia but you can’t take Appalachia  out of the Queen.” Ok it’s not really a saying, but the experience of running as far away as possible from our village/suburb/coal-mining-holler is common to many of us who end up here, and thus it’s intriguing when a queer New York artist creates work by returning to the milieu they left behind. Dane Terry‘s show “Bird In The House” at La Mama attempts this, and the results are dazzling.

“Bird” is a musical-narrative performance featuring the songs of Terry’s new album “Color Movies.” It’s a childhood epic told in shades of Southern magic-realism, with and the white working-poor experience, complete with homo awakenings at the pool and mystical encounters in the midnight woods. Yet any description of this coming-of-age tale belies what’s most wondrous about it: “Bird In The House” is an evening spent under the spell of a natural-born storyteller, a wizard whose power to delight, crack up, and terrify an audience comes from the traditions of the uniquely American world he brings so vividly to life.

The story unfolds in the land of Bluegrass and Folk, but Terry’s music is dynamically genre-bending. Elton John is in the room — so are Andrew Bird and David Bowie and Sufjan Stevens and Tammy Wynette. Still, the songs are each stamped with Terry’s compositional personality, full rich imagery and haunting dissonance. Dane plays beautifully, and the songs are theatrical, calling down a spiritual experience: queer church offering queer healing.  …

On the heels of our warming relations with Cuba I decided to check out this exceptional dance troupe from Cuba called Malpaso Dance Company now performing at the Joyce Theater through March 8th. Apparently the Joyce has a 13 year history of involvement with Cuba and it’s dance community. “Through a people-to-people license Joyce staff members and supporters have traveled to Cuba since 2001 helping to bridge the gap through cultural exchange.” This is amazing, no?

Weathering the wintry mix of snow, sleet and rain I trudged up 8th Ave. to the Joyce to check out the premiere of two pieces Malpaso performed. The second dance called Despedida inspired by Jorge Luis Borge’s poem of the same name blew my mind. First of all, I can’t begin to explain to you how phenomenally gorgeous the male dancers are, one more stunning then the next. And oh my, the muted clingy dance pants they wore thinly veiled the ample packages beneath-when the light hit just right it took my breath away. Even the New York Times said it was “impossible to choose a favorite among the dancers.” The piece is choreographed by the company’s artistic director Osnel Delgado set to an original score by award winning Cuban-American composer Arturo Farrill and played live by the Afro Cuban Jazz Ensemble. The piece was everything I was hoping for from my first experience with Cuban dance.

The first piece, which my dance partner-in-crime Beth called “very Prada,” (I imagine because of the subtle palette and silhouette of the clothes and elegant lighting) is called Under Fire (pictured). …

My cute str8 friend from work agreed to be my date for this show, and while waiting for the performance to start, we had a discussion about how we make shitty money and spend it on shitty things. Ironically, we discovered this show is not a shitty thing to spend money on.

Prepare to test your own financial insecurities as Ben Rimalower recounts his life story, skillfully intertwining personal anecdotes detailing a lifetime of utter fiscal incompetence in just over an hour. Ben delivers a brutally personal, creative performance courageously detailing all the shitty things he’s done to friends, family, workmates and ultimately, himself. If you’ve ever struggled with addiction, drugs, alcohol, sex or money (or all of the above), best believe Ben knows what’s up. It’s a truly therapeutic experience for both the audience and performer.

 
Ben and his director Aaron Mark share an impressive list of professional credits. Between the two, they have produced and directed Off Broadway shows seemingly since forever, performed on Watch What Happens Live, written films & documentaries, won awards, write for Playbill and Huffington Post… honestly, the production biography takes up the whole page. It’s very intimidating. You know when you go to a dive bar after a spectacularly shitty day to drink alone? (Yes you do, liar.) Ben is the kinda guy you hope to have sitting next to you, a casual confidante, relatable and charismatic with whom the conversation flows as effortlessly as the whiskey. Except Ben doesn’t drink anymore. …

It is on rare occasion that all the elements for true artistic perfection come together at the same time elevating a performance into the ether of the gods. I remember the first time I experienced this moment — it was when Peggy Fleming did her long program in figure skating to win the gold medal in the 1968 Olympics. I was five. The next standout performance in my memory came at age 19 when I saw Dreamgirls on Broadway in it’s original production, spending all my bar mitzvah money to see it another six times more before it closed. Now let me preface what I’m about to say by confessing A: I’m certifiably obsessed with rodeo B: greatly enamored by the works of composer/performer Sufjan Stevens C: Smoked some fine ass weed before the show, so here it is: Round-Up an hour and fifteen minutes of super slowmotion rodeo footage accompanied by a live original score by Sufjan Stevens with Yarn/Wine is by far the most sublime, seamless artistic experience I’ve had in years, going down in my memory as one of those “ether of the Gods” moments.

 
The subtle score by Stevens is performed live with two percussionists and two pianists beautifully enhancing imagery of bronco and bull riding, calf roping, cheerleading and related rodeo imagery shot by Aaron and Alex Craig so that 1 live second of action takes 12 seconds to transpire on screen. The effect is at once poetic and dazzling. You have to grab tickets fast because Round-Up now playing at BAM in the Harvey Theatre only has performances through Jan 25th. …