Cabaret Chronicles

by Michael Barbieri
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I’m very lucky.  From my days in the cabaret and piano bar scene, I happen to have some of the funniest, most talented friends anyone could hope for.  This month, I get to report on two of them.

Mark McCombs Presents Cracker Fried Tales

Mark McCombs is not your traditional cabaret performer.  With him, you’ll find no moving ballads, no smart selections from the Great American Songbook, and no pithy patter about life in the Big City.  What you’ll get are characters.  Cracker fried characters, as McCombs might say. His creations are male and female, young and old, but they’re all very similar - a little rough around the edges, and ornery.  Very ornery.

McCombs grew up in the Florida panhandle, and these are people he knows.  It’s hard to tell if he has a love/hate relationship with them, or simply a hate/hate thing, but they’re all funny, in a very twisted way.

His one-man show at the Metropolitan Room kicked off with the oldest living country music legend, Click Hollis, who gave us a catchy little ditty about the sure thing that’ll ruin someone’s day: “when some do-good-er hollers out, ‘Have a nice day!’ ”  As he put it, “them four little words could ruin a wet dream!”  Next, McCombs broke character just long enough to welcome the audience and explained that on the advice of the late Dom DeLuise, this show had been stripped down to the essentials - no big costume or wig changes, just a well placed prop or hat.  He said, “This is for Dom.”

We met Mrs. Myrtice Pooley, the town gossip, who chattered away on the phone, to her friend Modeen, about everything from a neighbor lady with a funk coming from her purse, worse than old, spoiled deviled eggs, to a friend whose husband committed suicide in front of his wife, saying “If I was half a man, this’d be you, but at least this way, I don’t have to clean up the mess!”  One of my favorite details was when Myrtice mentioned one of my favorite tacky artifacts from the 1970’s, a neighbor’s Venus DeMilo Rain Lamp!  Talk about a blast from the past!

Next up was Bit Mullens, a bait & tackle salesman with a crush on Lulu Roman, a singer and comic from the TV show Hee-Haw.  He describes his adventures trying to meet Lulu at a personal appearance at a local mall, where he ran into a supremely ugly woman and her equally ugly children: “the curdled creme de la creme...”  

After a hilariously horrifying montage of photographs of actual Wal-Mart customers (I nicknamed it “The ass-crack parade”) we met Treva Pitts, by far the prickliest of McCombs’ creatures.  While shopping at her local Wal-Mart, she’s rear-ended by her old 5th Grade teacher, which sets her off!  She rants about everything from getting her first period in school, to her desire to do an exposé on the town, so she can get “enough hard, cold cash to keep her in PBR and Oxycodone for life!”  Eventually, things get so heated, security carts her away in handcuffs.

Finally, there was Treva’s grandson, Terrence, a sweet, funny, twisted little boy who eats Kool-Aid powder right from the packet, and tells us about a friend showing him a porno magazine, which he didn’t like, because the woman’s privates reminded him of roast beef!

I enjoyed Cracker Fried Tales very much.  My two little quibbles might be that it felt somewhat over-long - one monologue could’ve been trimmed a bit.  Also, the heavy Southern accent, combined with the characters’ natural volume, had me missing certain words and phrases.  But McCombs’ honest and scathing portrayals of these wonderfully awful people, made for a funny evening, nonetheless.  Be on the lookout, should he decide to bring the show back at some point.  You’ll savor McCombs’ salty crackers!  

Elaine Brier and John McMahon’s Greatest Hits

Elaine Brier has worked in piano bars for nearly 28 years, and in that time, there’ve been some changes - she’s been married once or twice and had three beautiful daughters, but seemingly hasn’t aged a day!  What hasn’t changed, is that she’s still one of the funniest, most irreverent, most talented people performing in the bars today.  

This recent show at Don’t Tell Mama, showcased the team of Brier and longtime songwriting collaborator, John McMahon.  Together they created some of the most memorable material in the piano bar world.  In this show, which was less like a cabaret act, and more like a piano bar reunion, many of their best-known routines were served up to a house packed with friends and fans.

McMahon, a fabulous entertainer, and songwriter himself, warmed up the crowd with a sing-along of “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” prefacing the song with a funny, albeit very un-PC story about an incident with that song and a lady in a wheelchair attempting to get through the crowded piano bar.  Elaine hit the stage, and gave us two, count ‘em, two opening numbers, including “Crazy Opening Number,” from her show Jirque du Soleil.  In it, she and John stop several times, at whim (“WHIM!”), to test the audience with terrible jokes or song parodies, like Elaine’s version of “Something Stupid”, featuring the new lyric, ‘...and then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like...GET OFF ME!’

Along the way, we also got a wonderfully silly Sound of Music medley, the Happy Birthday/National Anthem mash-up, and Elaine’s version of “Feliz Navidad,” substituting Phylicia Rashad’s name in place of the title lyric.

We got to play Pick-a-Number, a game they conceived out of boredom on slow nights, where the crowd calls out numbers corresponding to pages in a “Fake Book,” and the page they select is the song they attempt to sing.

Some real crowd pleasers included Johnny Preston’s 1959 hit, “Running Bear,” with McMahon wearing a wig that looked like a dead animal - he quipped, “This is as close as you’ll see me to a beaver,” along with Elaine’s ultimate break-up revenge song “I Just Wasn’t Vietnamese,” and Bobby Darrin’s “Artificial Flowers,” the peppiest song about death you’ve ever heard!  Elaine described it as an oxymoron, like “jumbo shrimp, plastic glasses, and President Trump!” (Pause for huge laugh!)

After wrapping up with “I Honestly Love You,” done as a yearning love song from Olivia Newton-John to her secret lesbian crush (played hilariously by McMahon,) and a lovely, straightforward rendition of Chicago’s “You’re the Inspiration,” John and Elaine left us with one of her best-known parodies “You Fucked Up My Life,” which is as funny today as when she first sang it!

If you’re a long-time fan of Elaine Brier and John McMahon, this is a fantastic walk down a very twisted memory lane.  If you aren’t familiar with them, you’re in luck, because they’re bringing the show back again on Saturday, March 3rd.  Maybe we’ll hear “All Together Now,” or “Deli Song,” or.....

Elaine and John received a standing ovation at the end of the evening, and if you are lucky enough to catch them, I’m sure you’ll find yourself standing and cheering too.

Oh, and Elaine told me her secret to looking so young: dim lighting and acne.  Hey...if it works.

For more information, go to www.donttellmamanyc.com

Michael Barbieri

Food & Entertainment Writer