I hope someone at 54 Below knows CPR, because one of these nights Brian Stokes Mitchell is going to cause a fan to faint with his silky-smooth rendition of Camelot’s achingly romantic “If Ever I Would Leave You.” It almost happened last Tuesday night. I swear a table full of women from Orange, N.Y., were this close to falling off their chairs after Stokes—we can call him Stokes, can’t we?—started serenading them.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the effect the dashing Tony winner and his gorgeous voice have on a crowd—whether he’s playing to a packed house in musicals such as Ragtime or Kiss Me, Kate, backed by a full orchestra at Radio City Music Hall, or, in this case, singing with just a piano, bass, and drums in the intimate confines of the Broadway-adjacent 54 Below.
His two-week concert engagement, Plays With Music–Holiday, is timed to the release of his newest album, Plays With Music. If you’re not yet in the holiday spirit, don’t fret. The show isn’t all silver bells and sleigh rides—though there is a wonderfully jazzy version of “The Christmas Song” and a terrifically giddy “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” (I saw Stokes perform the latter with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra a few years ago, and it’s a definite crowd-pleaser. Please enjoy the lyric “You’re a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce” while you’re eating your dinner.)
Stokes goes heavy on the Broadway classics, but not the ones you might expect. Our tablemates were certain he’d perform Man of La Mancha’s “The Impossible Dream”—he received one of his four Tony nominations for the 2002 revival—but alas, no. They certainly didn’t leave disappointed, though. There’s a swingy “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” which opens the concert, a delicate “Hello Young Lovers,” and a gorgeous “The Man I Love,” for which he breaks out the melodica. (The reedy instrument made another appearance during that night’s encore, “What a Wonderful World,” which Stokes dubbed “probably my favorite song in the world.”) He salutes another Kiss Me, Kate star, Alfred Drake—another one of Broadway’s most memorable leading men—with the comic “Gesticulate,” from Drake’s Kismet. There are a couple Sondheim numbers: Company’s breakneck-paced “Getting Married Today” and “Flag Song,” which was cut from Assassins. And it’s rarely performed, but I do love Maury Yeston’s tender ballad “New Words,” which Stokes dedicated to his now-15-year-old son (“Look up there, high above us/ In a sky of blackest silk/ See how round, like a cookie/ See how white, as white as milk/ Call it the moon, my son/ Say moon…”).
Personally, I would have traded the singalong kiddie carol “Christmas Is” for another song from his album, Mack & Mabel’s “I Won’t Send Roses”—one of my favorite show tunes ever. Guess I’ll have to spring for the album to hear that one.
Brian Stokes Mitchell: Plays With Music–Holiday opened Nov. 12, 2019, and runs through Nov. 23 at Feinstein’s/54 Below. Tickets and information: 54below.com
