How do you follow up a tribute to Doris Day? Why, naturally, with a cabaret biography of convicted murderer Barbara Graham. Dubbed by the 1950s press as Bloody Babs, and executed at the San Quentin gas chamber in 1955, Graham led a misbegotten life that provided Susan Hayward with an Oscar-winning role three years later in I Want to Live! That's also the title of McKay's cabaret show that played to glowing reviews last year in New York, and that she has now taken on the road. San Francisco, where Graham worked for a time as a prostitute, is its next stop, playing Feb. 28-29 at the Rrazz Room.
"A brilliant, zany film-noir musical biography," is how The New York Times described the show when it played Feinstein's. The New Yorker 's reviewer was even more rapturous: "Part B movie, part seedy cabaret act, part existential meditation, and all musical exploration, McKay and an excellent band mix some original tunes, some period tunes, and some wildly anachronistic ones to create a brilliant piece of theatre."
The London-born McKay, who stomped around the U.S. as a kid with her eccentric divorced mother, began attracting attention on New York's boite circuit in her late teens before signing with Columbia Records in 2003. Her folky, jazz sound is hard to categorize, whether singing her own quirky compositions or old standards, and she variously accompanies her vocals on the piano, ukulele, cello, xylophone, and glockenspiel. Her latest CD is titled Home Sweet Mobile Home, and its immediate predecessor was titled, with at least some irony, Normal as Blueberry Pie �" A Tribute to Doris Day.
McKay hopes to record I Want to Live!, but there are no plans to expand it. "We try to keep it intimate," she told an interviewer earlier this month, "so I don't see it as a big stage show. And you need people to be drinking. This is a real drinking show. It has to have that nighttime energy going through the audience."
Ticket info for I Want to Live! is available at www.therrazzroom.com.
Mormon mania
In olden times, like 10 years ago and earlier, the percent of capacity at which a Broadway show played was the prime indicator of success. After all, how could you beat 100%? But with half-off tickets and something called dynamic pricing, the real gauge of success has become the average price of tickets sold. The winner for months, by far, has been The Book of Mormon. For example, during the most recent week at press time, the average price of a ticket to The Book of Mormon was $169.76. War Horse placed at $112.78, and The Lion King showed at $110.03.
Which is to say The Book of Mormon is a hot-as-Hades ticket, and reason enough for SHN to announce a November run at the Curran before it has the rest of the five shows in its 2012-2013 season ready to share. It will be a "strictly limited" five-week run, and the only way to guarantee a ticket to the Tony-winning musical from the creators of South Park is to take a flier on the rest of the TBA season. That can be done by calling (888) 746-1799 or by going to www.shnsf.com/shows/mormon.
No Nude 'Merchants'
The long-running indie theater group No Nude Men has a world premiere on its docket. Emerging playwright Susan Sobeloff explores the oddities of today's economy through the plight of two sisters in Merchants, running March 1-24 at Exit Stage Left.
Maura Halloran plays a struggling performance artist and Ariane Owens is her pregnant sister with a disappearing job in the collapsing financial industry. It's a topsy-turvy crisis that may be solved by commercializing the sister's performance art, as family obligations, artistic integrity, and the pull of the past converge.
Stuart Bousel, founder of No Nude Men Productions, is directing Merchants, which was presented earlier as part of the Playwrights' Center of San Francisco's program of developmental readings. Tickets are available at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/221334.
Life without father
Cassie Angley is the author and sole performer in Finding the Michaels, creating multiple characters as she centers on a character also named Cassie on a paternal quest. Footloose is presenting the solo show as part of its Artists in Motion program at Shotwell Studios.
The story begins on Sept. 11, 2001, as Cassie heads back to her New York teaching job after a mid-life crisis that included a fling with a character she dubs Messed-Up Mary. As the Twin Towers fall that morning, it unleashes an urgency in Cassie to find her long-missing father. Her search leads to a series of Michaels, who become characters in the piece about resetting a fractured life.
Angley has a lengthy resume as an actress and writer in New York and on the road. The current production came about after Footloose Artistic Director Mary Alice Fry saw a workshop production of Finding the Michaels at the Marsh. The two-weekend run at Shotwell begins March 3. Tickets at 289-2000 or www.brownpapertickets.com/event/222765.