“They used to say life begins at 40,” Leslie Uggams declared from the stage at 54 Below recently. “I think it’s two times 40.” It’s not the first reference Ms. Uggams, who hit the big 8-0 last year, had made to her age that evening, during an act that would have left most 40-year-olds gasping in awe and vicarious exhaustion.
That Uggams is a force who defies time and gravity won’t come as a revelation to anyone who’s been paying attention. The Tony Award-winning stage and screen veteran has maintained an active schedule lately, with recent projects including last year’s critically acclaimed film American Fiction and the celebrated concert production of Jelly’s Last Jam staged as part of New York City Center’s Encores! series in February.
At the cabaret performance I attended, the second of three at the venue—the engagement concludes March 23—Uggams managed to out-dazzle even the blinding glitter of her pantsuit. Backed by a superb trio led by music director Don Rebic on piano, accompanied by bassist George Farmer and drummer Buddy Williams, the singer blazed through a meticulously arranged collection of classics—the show is aptly titled “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue”—that traced her career while showcasing her enduring gifts.
The most stunning of those assets, from a purely biological perspective, was Uggams’s voice, an instrument that remains as clear as it is brassy, with a tremulous vibrato that can accommodate full-throated belting along with more subdued and sultry passages. After singing “My Own Morning” from Hallelujah, Baby!, the Jule Styne/Adolph Green/Betty Comden musical that provided her Broadway debut back in 1967, Uggams segued into Styne and Bob Merrill’s “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” giving Barbra Streisand a run for her money in the gusto department.
Uggams would later perform “Being Good Isn’t Good Enough,” also from Hallelujah, and a showstopping manifesto in much the same spirit as “Parade”: “When I fly, I must fly extra high/And I’ll need special wings…if I fall/Well, that’s the way it’s gotta be,” she sang, leaving no doubt about those special wings and little concern that she would stumble.
Through a set that also featured breezily swinging versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Hello Young Lovers” and Bernstein and Sondheim’s “Something’s Coming,” Uggams wielded such ferocity with an easy, infectious warmth, weaving in charming, funny stories culled from her decades in the business. There were recollections of a youth that found Uggams holding court at the Apollo Theater, and playing Ethel Waters’s niece (in the early television series “Beulah”).
A memory of sharing a bill at New York’s Paramount Theatre with the Beatles—as well as Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé—was followed by a medley of Lennon and McCartney’s “Yesterday” and Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach’s “Yesterdays” that, while touching, lagged a bit, before Uggams quickly regained momentum with a crackling take on Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home.”
The fetching pop oldie “Put A Little Love in Your Heart” (by Jackie DeShannon, Jimmy Holiday and Randy Myers), which Uggams noted had been the theme song for her self-titled variety series 45 years ago, became a duet, as the singer’s daughter Danielle Chambers joined her mom, lending her own powerhouse vocals and bubbly presence to the tune.
But the show’s high point, and one of several numbers that received at least partial standing ovations, was a bravura, shattering reading of Jerry Herman’s “If He Walked Into My Life,” which Uggams had delivered in Jerry’s Girls a quarter century back. In fact, were any producers looking for a new Auntie Mame, I would not count this octogenarian out; Uggams can still coax the blues right out of the horn and charm the husk right off of the corn, and then some.
Leslie Uggams opened March 20, 2024 , at 54 Below and runs through March 23. Tickets and information: 54below.com
