There was much to like in Adam B.Shapiro's newest show, "Nothing Normal," seen at Urban Stages for one night as part of the theatre's annual Winter Rhythms series (and previously at 54 Below and the Metropolitan Room): the jazzy piano playing by musical director Barry Levitt (particularly on the two songs he wrote with lyrics by director Peter Napolitano); the energetic drumming of Howie Gordon; Tom Hubbard's smooth standing bass playing; and, perhaps especially, the backup vocals of Erin Cronican and Samantha Northart. The two women were chirpy in a good way, and so in sync, both vocally and physically, that they could probably tour as the Siamese twins in Side Show, now that it's closing on Broadway. If anything, they were underutilized. Shapiro himself proved to have a good voice on both upbeat songs and ballads—albeit somewhat inconsistently. The unevenness of his delivery—at times he seemed to be straining, for no apparent reason—was clearly not a matter of tempo: He could be smooth and embracing on the mellower numbers, and invitingly boisterous on the faster songs. Or not.
His opening number neatly served as a metaphor for the decidedly mixed set to come. After only a teasing sampling of the "nothing that's normal" line from "Comedy Tonight" (Stephen Sondheim, from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) came an inspired choice, Weird Al Yankovic's "Everything You Know Is Wrong." What was immediately wrong was the sound level, which rendered the gamely exuberant Shapiro virtually inaudible, almost completely overwhelmed by his backup musicians and singers. While the volume balance was immediately corrected at song's end, the "nothing normal" concept, weak to begin with, kept going awry. Then there was the vest gambit. Shapiro, cheerily admitting to "a uniform fetish," told us that he makes his own flashy, sometimes even sequined, waistcoats, and likes to change them onstage frequently throughout his act, like some sort of mini-Liberace. But after only three quick early vest switches, he wore the third one for the rest of his set, abandoning the conceit and never mentioning it again.
Shapiro also nicely began by weaving some bits of his personal life story in amongst his first songs. He came from Indianapolis, there "the only Jew who doesn't like lox." On to Ball State University in Indiana for "BS at BSU," where he again was astonishingly "the only Jew in a theatre arts class." Neither of those anomalies appeared to have slowed his pursuit of a performing career in New York, and the autobiographical bits were also soon abandoned, only to return for his show's centerpiece: his being cast in HBO's adaptation of the Larry Kramer play The Normal Heart, and, more tangentially, a clever (if a tad overlong) lament about "Looking" (Levitt, Napolitano) for a new love and the exhausting non-joys of dating, which Shapiro described as "50 shades of 'Go Away.'" Who can't relate to that? Nothing abnormal there.
His involvement with The Normal Heart was, understandably, the highlight of Shapiro's young career thus far. But the anecdotes surrounding his selection for and work on the TV film were more name-droppy than interesting, insightful, or hilarious. Particularly because these stories were inherently non-musical, they didn't exactly advance the narrative of his set, which nonetheless featured a few highlights. "Secondhand White Baby Grand" (Marc Shaiman, Scott Whitman), that although broken "can still make a pretty song," was as sweet in its delivery as it was in its sentiment. A Shapiro-arranged mashup he called "Fats Whitney" effectively melded "Ain't Misbehavin'" (Thomas "Fats" Waller, Harry Brooks, Andy Razaf) and "Saving All My Love for You" (Michael Masser, Gerry Goffin, a number-one hit for Whitney Houston) as a paean to fidelity—which I trust is still the norm. A second, more upbeat, combo, also arranged by Shapiro, was the improbable finale that shouldn't have worked as well as it did: "I Will Survive (Freddie Perren, Dino Fekaris) and "God Bless the USA" (Lee Greenwood). Again, sentiments that are as normal as some kind of pie. The sunny outlier of an encore was also the most satisfyingly performed piece in the entire show: "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" (Eric Idle), which showed the entire team off to best advantage.
"Nothing Normal"
Urban Stages - December 10
