Song And Dance Girl

by David Anthony Fox

cabaret

Not only is Andrea Marcovicci up at 9 a.m. for our phone interview, she begins it singing: "Good morning, good morning, we've danced the whole night through/ Good morning, good morning to you!" (That's Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed, famously sung in Singin' in the Rain. Marcovicci would want you to know the details.)

This goddess of cabaret is also an actress, a fact immediately apparent when my first question—why a Fred Astaire tribute?—opens a storytelling floodgate. "I love this show so much! In the current version, it's theater-length with costume changes—very over-the-top. I've been in love with Astaire since I was a child. I love to dance, and my father was an exceptional ballroom dancer. He was a doctor from Vienna, but famous in the New York society columns for his waltzing. My mother and father would take to the floor, and everyone else would get off. I always think of my father in tails."

Of course, Marcovicci is also quick to credit Astaire's genius as a singer. "He's always been my favorite, one of the greatest of all. He has the cleanest lines of any singer, an egoless devotion to the sound, a real naturalism to the telling of a tale. Nothing gets in the way of his heart. He has no tricks. He never thought of himself as a good singer, so he doesn't waste any time with doobie-dos, Bing Crosby-isms—it's all there, and it's perfectly simple."

Marcovicci grew to know Astaire through television repeats of his films, and the visuals entranced her, too. "What a beautiful world to conjure up. There's a grace, an elegance that's lost today. I started young, aching for this kind of beauty. I love rock 'n' roll and lived in my own time but I still ached for this other world. That black and white—what beauty! It was [Hollywood art director] Van Nest Polglase who designed it all, you know. He doesn't get enough credit now, but it was his work also that made it."

This last bit of erudition is pure Marcovicci. Cabaret is more than a performance mode for her—it's a life study. I suggest that she should add "teacher" to the wonderful description she once gave of a cabaret singer ("part standup comic, part balladeer, part evangelist"). "Exactly! Sometimes I enter and say, "Hello, class.' But it's something we need to teach! This music is a natural legacy of being an American. If you left school without knowing who Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson were, would you be educated? Well, if you don't know who Larry Hart is Berlin, Porter. These people are our American poets."

Back to Astaire to close. What should audiences expect? "It's like a play, with a beginning, middle and end. It's got the famous songs ("The Way You Look Tonight," "The Continental") and some rarer ones ("I Used to Be Color Blind"). I dance all over the place—and wait till you see me in my tails! I'm very Ginger-ish at the show's beginning, but I'm really Fred at the end.

"I've never had more fun in my life!"

Andrea Sings Astaire, Oct. 6-17, $32-$40 plus $5 minimum, Morgans Cabaret at the Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700.