For her opening number at her recent show at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, Nellie McKay chose a hit song from 1967: the Doors’ “People Are Strange” (John Densmore, Robby Krieger, Ray Manzarek, Jim Morrison). Accompanying herself at the piano, she sang, in a wee voice but an incredibly intense one: “People are strange when you’re a stranger. / Faces look ugly, when you’re alone.”
But McKay wasn’t alone. There was a second figure with her on stage, projected onto a screen: Edward G. Robinson from Fritz Lang’s 1945 motion picture Scarlet Street. The grim Robinson moved around a dimly dark apartment, his face haunted. The downbeat quality of McKay’s vocals juxtaposed with the black-and-white moving image created a sensibility that, for some reason, put me in mind of the photography of Diane Arbus.
This was the first (and one of the most successful) of such juxtapositions that we in the audience experienced at McKay’s show. Besides Scarlet Street, we would watch vintage animated cartoons (including a Betty Boop), Steve McQueen in Bullitt, the Marx Brothers demolishing the known world, and the surreal feline-euthanizing sequence from Walt Disney’s 1963 film The Three Lives of Thomasina, in which, after Thomasina the cat is gassed, her soul visits the temple of an Egyptian cat goddess. (I knew what the scene was immediately, because it had both terrorized and entranced me when I saw it in my local cinema when I was nine years old.)
Throughout the first third of her show, McKay spoke, at most, a word or two. No patter at all—certainly none that was premeditated.
The songs ran a wide gamut, which, I’ve learned, is a McKay trademark. There were Golden Age American Songbook tunes, such as Deek Watson and Brown Dots’ “(I Love You) for Sentimental Reasons” and one of the most beautifully tender renditions I’ve ever heard of “I’m Glad There Is You” (Jimmy Dorsey, Paul Madeira). There were some catchy 1960s pop tunes, including the energetic “Red Rubber Ball” (Paul Simon, Bruce Woodley) and a wonderful take on Lennon and McCartney’s appealing/disturbing ballad “If I Fell.” What an ear-catching melody that one has. Plus, there were songs of McKay’s own creation (“Manhattan Avenue,” “I Wanna Get Married”).
For some numbers, she left the piano and turned to ukulele and harmonica. She also modulated her voice. She will likely never drown out Patti LuPone, but her volume on some songs (such as “Red Rubber Ball”) blossomed into something much stronger than her sound on “People Are Strange.”
In the latter part of the show, McKay spoke to the audience a great deal more, adding to the whimsical ambience of the show. In a sing-along sequence, she would throw out a musical line, and the audience would call back what they’d heard. She spouted increasingly ludicrous patterns of syllables and notes, challenging her listeners, who seemed genuinely happy to have been asked to play pong to her ping. I found her altogether charming.
Up to a point.
Eventually, more and more of the onstage talk was about the technical trouble she was having in presenting those digital clips. Her admiring fans didn’t seem to mind. But I believe her difficulties truly had a negative effect on the pacing of the show. Time spent on this struggle didn’t earn her any points for her skill at being in the moment. Instead, it amounted to losing a bunch of moments. The abandon-all hope point seemed to arrive was when she apparently couldn’t locate the file she was searching for, so just fired up the Marx Brothers clip again.
I very much liked her singing and her rapport with the audience. But I hope that, next time, she leaves the music-video stuff behind. There are good reasons why MTV moved beyond that format early in this century. More to the point, watching Nellie McKay as she sings and plays is visual component enough. Let Edward G. Robinson and Steve McQueen rest in peace.
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Presented at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, 407 W. 42nd St., NYC, Nov. 24, 2025.
Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing reviews for BistroAwards.com in 2011. More recently he has contributed "Cabaret Setlist" articles about cabaret repertoire. Other reviews and articles have appeared in theaterscene.net and clydefitchreport.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.
