JLY’s Allen Room Show Delights Reviewer!
March 9th, 2008From David Noh of Gay City News:
Back in Gotham, I was welcomed home with a plethora of music only our town can offer. “Welcome to my apartment,” said John Lloyd Young, greeting us at his nifty Lincoln Center “American Songbook” cabaret debut (February 23). “I furnished it with Ikea and you know I pay a lot of rent because look at this view!”
And, indeed the moon-dominated Rose Room vista down 59th Street was the perfect backdrop for Young’s concert of what I like to call “The Good American Songbook,” i.e., radio hits from the 1960s, which provided the percolating backdrop to my childhood. Nattily attired Rat Pack-style, Young opened with Lou Christie’s “Lightning Striking Again,” which showed off his endearing “Jersey Boys” falsetto and set the melodically nostalgic tone.
Beautifully rendered versions of “At Last,” “Cryin’” and “Spanish Harlem” followed, and he camped it up with a Tina Turner “Private Dancer” imitation that was as delectably wrong as his cover of “Young Girl,” Gary Puckett’s overwrought ode to underage diddling. He cited his adoptive mother in the audience, fully decked out in “Jersey Boys” gear, and touchingly dedicated a song to his birth mom, who died when he was two. The adoring crowd, largely consisting of his Broadway fan base, ate it up like pasta fazool.
