The Randy Andys are a saucy, toe-tapping trio. The premise of tackling adult(ish) pop tunes with a vintage approach has charmingly worked its way through the internet and late-night talk shows and back into live performance: Jimmy Fallon’s barbershop quintet hip hop covers, and Postmodern Jukebox have primed us for this.
Jocelyn Lonquist Klein, Alison Mahoney, and Alicia Charles (Photo: Casey Martin Klein)
It’s a one-joke idea, but it’s a good joke: well-executed, and full of misdirects, sneak attacks, and well-earned poignant moments. The arrangements for “Spring Swing” were stellar. Music director and pianist Matthew Everingham, alongwith fellow arrangers Adrian Ries, Micah Young, and Tim Rosser, have created a clever and musically-complex set. Vocal arrangements were sometimes inspired by a straight-ahead Andrews Sisters sound, but we also heard complex jazz voicings and dissonant harmonies.
This was tough singing, but The Randy Andys’ founder Alison Mahoney, with Alicia Charles and Jocelyn Lonquist Klein, made it sound effortless with a wink and a smile throughout. Choreography by Gina Daugherty and Antoinette DiPietropolo, who is also the director, added to the polish and difficulty level. The Andys were ably backed by the Matthew Everingham Trio, with Patrick Moran on drums and Giana Di Natale on bass. Guest artists kept the evening varied: Wesley J. Barnes’s version of “Ordinary People” (John Legend) was an earnest, soulful plea. Gabriella Enriquez covered “Juice” (Lizzo, Theron Thomas, Sam Sumser, Melissa Jefferson, Sean Spencer Small, Ricky Reed) and did a good job of keeping her big energy—with a powerful upper vocal range and dance chops that we just glimpsed—in a collaborative, ensemble mode.
The show was at its best when it showed maximum contrast between the innocence of the vintage style and the punch of the more contemporary material. Kudos to whomever was lying in bed one day and connected the dots between the nightmare of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” (Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich) and The Chordette’s dreamy “Mr. Sandman” (Pat Ballard). Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator” (Steven Tyler, Joe Perry) is too tempting not to cover, even if it’s just to glissando on the “going down” lyric, which they satisfyingly did. . “Toothbrush” (Joe Jonas) was particularly successful, with Lonquist Klein on lead vocals finding some of the acting beats that would work in musical theatre, working here as well, as she shyly admitted she might be okay with commitment. “Here You Come Again” (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil) was our Dolly Parton-inspired tender moment of the night; a well-earned reflective song in an otherwise high-energy experience.
The Randy Andys must do an especially good job of entertaining multi-generational audiences when they tour. For cabaret audiences or for those who have slightly more postmodern taste, I wonder what might happen if we saw signs of the sensibility behind the performers’ perpetually cheerful pearly whites and knowing winks. Not that we’d want to make a fun show into a think piece, but this premise is fundamentally satiric. It’s a subtly challenging idea to expose the similarities and the tensions between today’s sex-forward and profit-driven pop (possibly written by fifteen songwriters in a Swedish bunker), with wartime visions of uniformly wholesome sentimentality…which was also, at one time, commercial pop. Where does each ideal lift us up, and where do they let us down? How can humor help us find the middle? The Randy Andys are finding out.
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Presented at Green Room 42, 570 Tenth Ave., NYC, on May 2, 2025.
From Canada, Penelope Thomas came to NY to study dance with Merce Cunningham; then through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events, she wound up back in singing and acting. Credits include lead vocals with FauveMuseum on two albums and live at Symphony Space, singing back-up for Bistro Awards director Shellen Lubin at the Metropolitan Room, reading poet Ann Carson’s work at the Whitney, and touring North America and Europe with Mikel Rouse’s The End of Cinematics. In Toronto, she studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Music and cello with the Claude Watson School for the Arts, and in New York she studied music theory with Mark Wade. She's taught in the New School’s Sweat musical theatre intensive and taught dance in public schools and conservatories.
