Ruth Leon recommends….

Ring Them Bells! A Kander and Ebb Celebration

 This is a full-length concert programme celebrating the songs of John Kander and Fred Ebb.   Those readers who are not musical theatre nuts – there must be a few of you out there – may not be aware that this great partnership spawned some fifteen of the most significant and successful musicals of the past 50 years.

Together, they composed the scores for Cabaret, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Zorba, The Act, amongst many others, the score for Martin Scorcese’s film, New York New York and Liza, a 1974 concert for Minnelli.

Here, the songs are performed by some of Broadway’s finest including  Joel Grey, who started it all as the Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret, performing his signature song from that show.

We lost the great Chita Rivera recently. Here, aged 80, she guest-stars in this 2013 television special, singing All That Jazz, Class, Love and Love Alone, Say Yes, and Cabaret. The show is introduced charmingly by the Music Director Rob Fisher. The late brilliant Marin Mazzie whose smile lights up the stage with her husband, Jason Danieley  round out the bill, along with a brief appearance from John Kander himself whose partner, Fred Ebb, had already died by the date of this show.

The show’s most touching moments come from a comic song, Class, from Cabaret, sung and acted faultlessly by Marin Mazzie and Chita Rivera, but amidst the laughter there are tears because they are no longer with us, this performance demonstrating  how very much we’ve lost.

​For us musicals nuts, sheer bliss.

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