Kathleen Turner – Finding my Voice ☆☆☆☆☆
The Other Palace Theatre
The moment Kathleen Turner steps on to stage you know you are in the presence of a Hollywood legend. For a start, she has Hollywood Eyebrows – those languorous, expressive eyebrows recall a Hollywood heyday frequently referenced in the songs she will sing tonight. It might be said, however, the singing is now more Stritch than Streisand – in fact, it’s more Harvey Fierstein than that but every pitch-perfect note is thrilling to hear.
On stage, there is a terrific three-piece jazz band of bass, guitar and expertly led by Mark Janas on piano. There are also drapes of crushed velvet and lavender soft furnishings; a dozen red roses; a chair, a stool, and a sofa. Yes, the camp-o-meter is off the scale – we are ready to begin.
The show starts with quotes from her films including Body Heat (1981) Romancing the Stone (1984) and Prizzis Honor (1985). Her performances in these films attracted a clutch of Golden Globes wins and Oscar nominations and remind us, if it were needed, of her bona fide acting credentials.
The songs in the first half reach way back to 1933 Arlen & Koehler’s Lets Fall In Love and 1937 Rogers and Harts Where or When. These are demanding jazz standards performed with the kind of clarity and intensity that a great actor can bring to a song – the ability to act through the lyrics, and we hang on every line.
Ms. Turner tells us it’s her 41st year in the business – in one calendar year, she only had 14 nights where she wasn’t in a show or rehearsing for one. Appropriately she launches into Sweet Kentucky Ham, the quintessential road song; the heartbreak of being on the road; eating alone late in restaurants; forlorn hotel rooms.
A hilarious anecdote about a girl fan getting the name Kathleen Turner tattooed on her ass leads into Everyone Has the Right to be Wrong (At Least Once) a song made famous by Sinatra in 1965.
She comes from a tradition of Public Service – her father was in the Foreign Service so she spent time in London and graduated from the American School in 1972 so what could be apter than Gershwin’s A Foggy Day.
I’d Rather go Sailing from the gay romantic off-broadway musical A New Brain is the emotional highpoint of the evening. Notably, she also sings You’ve got to be Carefully Taught – the song from South Pacific warning about racism and xenophobia. We are reminded how controversial this was in 1949 and how sad there is still the urgent need to sing this song in modern-day America.
An impressively varied and thoughtful setlist is seamlessly woven around bittersweet anecdotes – the show really does resonate emotionally and leaves you wrung through. Great diction and superb timing make the extraordinary look effortless and the gorgeously warm acoustics of this newly built theatre do worthy service to Ms. Turner’s voice.
Her battle with arthritis (“I went from doing my own stunts to being in a wheelchair”) is well documented elsewhere but when she sings the haunting song about living in the present called Throw it Away (written by the singer/songwriter and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln) it has the poignant line “You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you” – a worthy motto for us all to live by.
Review by JONNY WARD Queerguru London Correspondent 