MARIA FRIEDMAN (LIVE)

Maria Friedman in an intimate concert performing some of her favourite songs. Please note that the information on the page relates primarily to the New Ambassadors Theatre, London series of concert.

New Ambassadors Theatre, London
Opened Monday 22 April 2002
Closed Saturday 27 April 2002

Minerva Theatre (Chichester Festival Theatre) Chichester, West Sussex
Friday 15 August 2003

• Musicians
• Production Team
• Songs
• Notes
• Quotes from the Press
• CD Recording
• Links

Recorded live at London's New Ambassadors Theatre - Featuring 19 tracks

Click here to buy now

Maria had hoped to present a fuller concert, with a larger orchestra (similiar to her By Special Arrangement and By Extra Special Arrangement concerts in 1994/5) for a month-long season at the larger Wyndham's Theatre but this unfortunately fell through because 'performance insurance' for such a large show was unable to be obtained because Maria was around five months pregnant.

The performances started at 9.00pm, after the evening show of The Vagina Monologues - the 'furry red' set of The Vagina Monologues being covered with black curtains for Maria's show. Interestingly Maria had hoped to join the cast of The Vagina Monologues in late June for a three week stint but this did not happen.

As Maria and her two musical directors, Jason and Simon, where not allowed into the New Ambassadors Theatre until just before the start of the show. This meant that Maria had to do her vocal warm-ups in an office down the street!

"There is no chance of a faulty piece of computerised gadgetry bringing Maria Friedman's show to a halt. All she requires are two pianos, some lights and a discreet black curtain to cover the gaudy set used earlier in the evening by the gallant crew of The Vagina Monologues. The only possible technical hitch on the horizon is that Friedman, heavily pregnant, might just go into premature labour during her brief residency. Fingers crossed.
Her conspicuous bump caused the cancellation of a month-long season at Wyndham's [Theatre]: the insurers, she explained, were not willing to risk paying out if the baby chose to arrive in mid-run. What we get instead is a taut, scaled-down version which plays to Friedman's strengths as an actress blessed with a rare ability to unearth a song's emotional complexities.
When she brought her one-woman show to the Whitehall Theatre some years ago, showbiz convention won out over intimacy. This bare-bones setting truly does her justice. For all her gifts as a Sondheim interpreter, I had always found her a little too icy before. This time, with the searching intelligence balanced by self-deprecating humour, it is impossible not to be won over.
With the excellent Simon Lee and Jason Carr thumping away at the keyboards, Friedman zigzags through a patchwork of favourites that represents old and new Broadway as well as honouring the grown-up end of the singer-songwriter tradition. Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega receives a whispery a cappella treatment; Friedman even turns on the jazz-diva charm in Twisted, a comic study in neurosis that the peerless Annie Ross wove out of a Wardell Gray tenor solo years ago.
Friedman's sense of humour is not always subtle. She hams it up on Randy Newman's Short People and goes slightly over the top on that glorious show-stopper, Bill. But Lee and Carr make engagingly mischievous foils nonetheless. Sondheim, of course, gets a look-in with a neatly contrived medley built around The Road You Didn't Take. Friedman's selection of songs from the Vilna Ghetto has seldom sounded more moving and intense, and while the Eisler-Brecht collaboration Song of a German Mother exudes a faint air of agit-prop, she still homes in on its core of universal despair.
Songs flow into each other with enormous panache. At the close Friedman toasts Manhattan with I Happen to Like New York. The last time I heard her sing Cole Porter's love-letter to the centre of the Universe, as she stood atop a staircase at the Whitehall, I thought she sounded as if she was still buying her Tube ticket to Heathrow. This time she is cruising down the West Side Highway in a stretch limo." Clive Davis, The Times (26 April 2002)

A live audio recording was made of the concerts at the New Ambassadors Theatre and was released in April 2004 with the following 19 tracks.

Click here to buy the CD

• Jason Carr Official website

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