Sherie Loves Norbert & Vice-Versa
Genius two-hander; Nelson Sullivan on Gansevoort
BY DAVID NOH
The Broadway season is offi cially ended,
of course and, while more ignorant,
commercially-minded theater queens
may bemoan the lack of anything big
and splashy to get wet over, the most thrilling
show I’ve seen so far this year is a two-hander,
at Feinstein’s/ 54 Below (on July 12), running
until July 28. In fact, “Twohander” is its title,
and it stars Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo
Butz, who have put together something that has
really never been done before. When it began,
very abruptly, without the usual “Ladies and
gentleman, here are...” shtick, I wasn’t sure if the
strong and quite combative personas they were
projecting with such fi endish energy and confi -
dent brio were characters, or actually just them.
It became apparent that they were, indeed,
being Sherie and Norbert, two protean, always
totally committed talents, recounting their intense,
up-and-down, dizzyingly romantic yet
long-unconsummated love for each other, from
the time they met in — as they say — the “early,
late ‘90s” while appearing in “Rent” (he was Sunday
Night Roger) through their co-starring Off-
Broadway in Jason Robert Brown’s “The Last
Five Years,” to various failed and almost-projects
(“Next to Normal”).
And it all coming together successfully on
Broadway, fi nally originating juicy roles in
“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” for which — through
her help it’s revealed — he won the Tony. And
then, various tensions and, always, their combustible
interpersonal connection resulted in a
fi nal blow-up with them not speaking for years.
It’s the kind of incredibly candid personal
reveal, set to music, that could induce queasiness,
to say the least. But such are these two
performance geniuses’ skill, sensitivity, titanic
wit, gorgeous musicality, and, above all, graceful
tact, with material that while blisteringly frank
is at all times highly respectful to both, that you
are slyly, yet irresistibly pulled in, experiencing
every fraught moment of their relationship,
through its myriad changes, as if it were your
own.
The songs are largely culled from their shows
— call this an anti-jukebox musical, because
many of them are sung only partially, or reinterpreted
— and they are all interwoven into their
compelling, often uproarious, and sometimes
deeply affecting dialogue, with uncanny seamlessness.
Hard-core theater buffs will lap up all
of the juicy backstage details, delighting in the
ubiquity with which these two kept trouping together,
having both realized their stage chemistry
and each other’s supernal gifts from the
get-go, while someone who’s never even seen a
FEINSTEIN’S/ 54 BELOW
Norbert Leo Butz.
FEINSTEIN’S/ 54 BELOW
Sherie Rene Scott.
musical will inevitably respond to the bittersweet
“What-if?” quality of their gallantly maintained
— if often severely challenged — mutual platonic
connection. Don’t we all have at least one devastating
“one that got away” story in our lives?
“Just get in here!,” Scott says she thought at
one point, lying in bed while he was a houseguest.
“My husband sleeps through anything!”
One surprising song that popped up was a
honey that is never done — Kander and Ebbs’
“How Lucky Can You Get” from Streisand’s movie
“Funny Lady.” They brought a goofi ness to it —
as well as a searing soulfulness from her — and
it’s the perfect theme for the sweet rapprochement
that happened between them. This is the
most excruciatingly intimate but quite brilliant,
superbly accompanied cabaret-that-is-pure-theater
little miracle, in which they both get to play
the two best roles of their insanely accomplished
lives.
As if acting, singing, dancing, and playing guitar,
with his usual breathless, breathtaking, and
riveting abandon, weren’t enough, Butz, mensch
supreme, stood at the club’s exit after the show
greeting and thanking everyone for coming. The
only two performers I have ever seen do this in
cabaret are Brooke Shields and the great Jack
Jones, and, if being humble is the sign of the
greatest artists — which I fi rmly believe is the
truth — you should have heard Butz apologizing
to everyone for his sweat-stained shirt. Was
he kidding? The enslaved audience would have,
as one, gladly sniffed those pits and lapped up
every drop!
“A Look Back: Fifty Years After Stonewall”
is an art exhibit running through August 10,
at Fort Gansevoort, which is that brownstone
that stands in the very middle of the Meat Market.
I used to visit there when it was the home of
one of the show’s subjects (along with Peter Hujar,
Kate Millet, David Wojnarowicz, and Greer
Lankton), the late videographer Nelson Sullivan.
A lovely, louche true gentleman of the South,
he was a Downtown fi xture in the mythic 1980s,
a heavy video camera forever perched on one
shoulder, as he captured forever the fabulously
raffi sh and magical characters of the club and
party scene, priceless footage that you can now
see on his well-kept YouTube profi le. Sullivan
superstars included Sylvia Miles (a testament to
his gallant forbearance), RuPaul in his earliest
days in town, Michael Musto, Lady Bunny, the
great Ethyl Eichelberger, Tish Gervais, Lahoma
Van Zandt and, even moi, recorded one sunny
day on his roof when he, Musto, and I engaged
in an uproarious game of Trivial Pursuit (movie
version).
Nelson was truly one-of-a-kind, obsessed in
just the right way (as we all were), not one to
suffer fools, and he left us much too soon. But,
watching the wonder on these gay millennials’
faces at the warm reunion of an opening (July
11) looking at all those youthful East Village rara
avises kicking up their cha cha heels — each
one virtually defi ning camp, Ms. Wintour — it
did my heart good to know that his work will live
on forever.
TWOHANDER | Feinstein’s/ 54 Below, 254 W.
54th St. | Jul. 18-21, Jul. 25-28 at 7 p.m.; Jul. 21
at 9:30 p.m. | $70-$145, plus $25 food & drink
minimum | 54below.com
A LOOK BACK: FIFTY YEARS AFTER STONEWALL
| Fort Gansevoort, 5 Ninth Ave. | Through
Aug. 10: Tue.-Sat., 11 a.m.-6 p.m. | fortgansevoort.
com
July 18 - July 31, 2 26 019 | GayCityNews.com
/54below.com
/GayCityNews.com
