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The outlaw of cabaret returns to town
Sharon McNight belts out tunes for an AIDS benefit Sunday
By Ann Wood & Kaimi Rose Lum
Banner Staff
It seems that every Broadway actor has had, at one time or another, a cabaret show. But Sharon McNight isn't every Broadway actor - her cabaret shows aren't about re-creating past roles and she doesn't belt out Cole Porter tunes. She's out to offend instead, and she's having a good time doing it.
“I've been the outlaw of cabaret for many years,” she says by phone from her Los Angeles home. “Most people in cabaret pick dead composers [but] I don't do the same thing as everybody, … that has been my mantra.”
McNight says that when she started doing cabaret “someone” decided that shows should be themed. Her first one was called “Anthem,” but McNight wasn't happy with it. She wasn't sure about what to do instead, but figured it out when she found a five dollar cassette in a bin at some record store. On it, Eddie Cantor sang “The Dumber They Come, the Better I Like Them (Because the Dumb Ones Know How to Make Love).” McNight decided to devote her show - and two albums - to strange smutty songs.
“It turned out to be a goldmine, because it turns out repression is high so smut really sells,” she says.
The third track of her CD “How to Offend Almost Everyone” opens with beautiful piano music; it's quiet and almost forlorn. A love song, it seems. But then McNight starts crooning: “Everybody's f--king but me/ I just can't seem to get laid/ Some girls even ball two or three/ And then they just seem to trade/ I can't get laid.”
The outlaw cabaret performer, who first brought her show to town in 1980 and hasn't performed here in five years, returns to Provincetown for a one-night-only show to benefit the AIDS Support Group of Cape Cod. She'll belt out tunes beginning at 9 p.m. Sunday at Provincetown Town Hall, 260 Commercial St., Provincetown. Tickets are $25 or $75 for VIP seating and can be purchased online at ptowntix.com or by calling (508) 487-9793.
McNight began her career in San Francisco and made her Broadway debut in 1989 in Starmites, creating the role of Diva. She received a Tony Award nomination for Best Leading Actress in a Musical for her performance, and is the recipient of the Theatre World Award for Outstanding Broadway Debut and a Hirschfeld drawing of her character. She's appeared on television, in a documentary and has recorded six solo albums, the most recent of which is “Offensive Too, Volume Two,” a sequel to “Songs to Offend Everyone.”
“I like live performance. The thing about cabaret is you are yourself. You have to be yourself on purpose,” McNight says. “You have to be honest or you have to be real for it. You have to be polished and professional, but if you're slick I can smell you a mile away.”
McNight received her master's degree in theater from San Francisco State University. But well before that, as an only child, her parents kept her busy with lessons including ballet, tap, hula, flute and piano.
McNight began singing in San Francisco cabarets. Her first extended road trip was to Provincetown to perform for a month at The Pilgrim House back when entertainers such as Craig Russell, Eartha Kitt, Tiffany Jones and Christine Jorgesson sang there.
One night she was doing a show and the power went out. The emergency lights came on and because the drag queens couldn't perform without electricity, she sang in the dark without a microphone. (She says her Broadway training allows her to do that.) At the end of her set, McNight made a toast, and the lights came on.
“And everybody freaked out,” she says. “We had some great times together. Lots of parties and lots of fun.”
McNight returned to Provincetown every summer for years. When the Pilgrim House sold and then burned down, she started performing at Rick's, a club her musical director Richard Weinstock owned, until he died from AIDS in 1993. (She has been in the forefront in the fight against AIDS since the early 1980s, and was featured in Randy Shilts' book, “And the Band Played On.”)
McNight was also chosen as the on-screen narrator for the documentary film “There That Night,” based on the devastating fire that leveled Whaler's Wharf in Provincetown. The film covered the fire that could easily have taken the entire downtown and the history of the building and its place in the community.
In other Provincetown connections, the singer debuted the beginnings of her one-woman musical based upon Sophie Tucker (which eventually ran Off-Broadway as “Red Hot Mama”) at The Crown & Anchor. She's now working on a show called “Ladies, Compose Yourselves!” which features all women songwriters and has a new show “Betty, Betty, Bette,” about Betty Hutton, Betty Grable and Bette Davis, which is scheduled to premiere in New York in October. Although McNight has to leave Provincetown early Monday morning to perform that evening in San Francisco with Eddie Fisher, she'll have time for old friends - and food.
“I get to see the old crowd and I get to have softshell crabs at Front Street,” she says, adding that she's not sure what numbers she'll perform yet. “I better make up my mind because I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Some of the old stuff, they'll be screaming for that. And some new stuff. … Kind of a mish mosh of some of them over the years.”
And you can bet there will be some smut mixed in.
awood@provincetownbanner.com
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In the Arts
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Sep 1st, 2005