183. LOVE,
LINDA: THE LIFE OF MRS. COLE PORTER
Poster outside the York Theatre, on E. 54th St.
A glitch that I discovered
on Friday forced me to reschedule a matinee performance yesterday for the evening
(I’d accidentally scheduled two matinees), but the combination of 1) it being a
last minute thing and 2) the dire weather forecast prevented me from finding a
companion to go with me. The latter was probably the main reason, since the theatre was less than half filled and we were informed that 30 ticket holders were not coming. Given the age range of most of the people who accompany
me to the theatre, it’s unlikely to have been because of the contents of the
show, a revue at the York Theatre featuring the music of Cole Porter. Younger
folks, like my granddaughters, might wonder, Cole who?, but for older
generations Cole Porter remains a show biz legend whose classic songs, for
which he wrote both music and lyrics, are among the greatest in the American
songbook. And, although only 20 songs f Porter’s remarkable output are
represented in the show (mostly in truncated versions), one never gets tired of hearing them.
Stevie Holland. Photo: Carol Rosegg.
The show itself, LOVE, LINDA: THE
LIFE OF MRS. COLE PORTER, however, is something else. Stevie Holland, a svelte,
attractive jazz singer, with a stylish blonde bob and wearing a full-length,
form-fitting black dress (designed by Pamela Dennis), stars as the title
character. Ms. Holland co-wrote the show, which is essentially a cabaret act,
with her husband, Gary William Friedman (who also did the arrangements). LOVE,
LINDA is actually a revival, having been seen at the Triad in 2009. It has a
new director, the acclaimed Richard Maltby, Jr., but there’s very little that’s
fresh in it, and the 75-minute performance never rises above the level of being
pleasantly entertaining.
LOVE, LINDA is structured like so many
of its kind, with the star telling the story of her life and interspersing it
with songs that, hopefully, have immediate relevance to the narrative (the
connections here sometimes seem forced). Linda Lee Thomas Porter (1883-1954), a
Kentucky heiress, apparently spoke with a southern accent, which is about the
only overtly characterizing element in Ms. Holland’s friendly and sometimes slightly arch performance, with such occasional wisecracks as "The stakes were high and usually served medium rare." Aficionados
are probably familiar with Cole Porter’s face, but how many, I wonder, would
recognize Linda Porter’s if they saw it in a photograph? So, apart from people
who’ve read biographies of her husband, most of us know little about this woman,
unless we think we do because we saw Alexis Smith play a totally fictionalized
version of her in the biopic NIGHT AND DAY, with, of all people, Cary Grant as
the Indiana-born songwriter.
And, sorry to say, LOVE, LINDA reveals
little about Linda Porter we didn’t already know—her acceptance of Cole’s
homosexual inclinations and affairs (all she asked for was his discretion), the couple’s international high life in
the 1920s and 1930s when they were “the toast of the town,” their life in
Hollywood (which he loved and she hated), her ministering to Cole after the
catastrophic fall from a horse that crushed his leg, their residence at the Waldorf-Astoria, the loss of her beauty (barely
alluded to) because of the tobacco-inflicted emphysema that killed her (she
suffered from a chronic cough but you’d never know it from this show). Based on
Ms. Holland and Mr. Friedman’s name-dropping book, it would seem that there’s little to be
learned about her personally apart from her being Porter’s wife, and it’s his
achievements, not hers, that the show focuses on. The show might have benefited
considerably from emphasizing the argument that Cole Porter could never have
become so successful without Linda’s support, both emotionally and financially. We must settle merely for her assertion that she was his muse.
Moreover, Linda Porter wasn’t even a singer, so why do a show in which the
chief reason to watch a singer impersonating her is to hear her sing Porter’s
songs?
Ms. Holland is engaging
and polished, but she’s not in any way extraordinary or unique. Her acting
is superficial and her material is almost always on the sunny side, so there’s
really no opportunity for darker histrionics. We settle then for effective, but
not particularly memorable renderings, of “So in Love,” “What Is This Thing
Called Love,” “I Love Paris,” “Miss Otis Regrets,” “In the Still of the Night,”
“Let’s Do It,” “Let’s Misbehave,” “You Do Something to Me,” “Let’s Be Buddies,”
“Ridin’ High,” “Love for Sale,” “My Heart Belongs to Daddy,” and “Wunderbar,”
with a few less well-known ones thrown in for good measure. A talented trio of musical
director Christopher McGovern on piano, Danny Weller on bass, and Alex Wyatt on
drums accompanies Ms. Holland.
I
know many readers will start humming or singing some of these tunes as soon as
they see their titles, but, apart from hearing them nicely sung on a stage
smartly fashioned by James Morgan and nicely lit by Graham Kindred to suggest a swanky New
York penthouse, there’s no compelling reason to rush to the York for LOVE,
LINDA. A CD version (sold at the theatre but also online) is available for the Porter cognoscenti.
