Now celebrating his 25th anniversary of presenting concerts and commentary on the history of Broadway musicals, creator, writer, director, and host Scott Siegel, who’s had more than 600 shows produced worldwide, opened the first of three installments in the 2025 series of Broadway by the Season on Friday, March 28, with a top-notch cast of stars and emerging artists from the NYC stage revisiting a selection of songs from hit musicals and lesser-known shows of the years 1934-35 and 1946-47, in an entertaining and informative two acts at Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall. In his signature style, Siegel set the stage for each season and musical number with historical background information and funny facts, and perfectly paired the performers to the songs, accompanied on piano by the masterful Ross Patterson, who’s served as his musical director for the entire 25 years.
In Act I, Siegel introduced us to the depths of The Great Depression (1929-39), which had an enormous impact on Broadway; both audience attendance and the number of productions decreased dramatically as a result of the crashing economy. But Harlem’s Apollo Theater (centered on Black artists and culture) opened in 1934, and even some of Broadway’s long forgotten musicals from the 1934-35 season, like Revenge with Music, Life Begins at 8:40, and Thumbs Up!, gave us some memorable songs, while Cole Porter’s Anything Goes (a story of eccentric characters and romantic escapades aboard a cruise ship), and George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (a folk opera of love and social injustice in an African American community in 1920s Charleston, featuring a cast of Black actors, instead of the usual blackface of the time), would become standards of American theater.
Act II focused on the 1946-47 Broadway season, which, as Siegel noted, marked the end of WWII in the preceding year, the beginning of the Baby Boom and the Cold War, the introduction of drive-through banks, electric blankets, and bikinis, and the debuts of such beloved musicals as Finian’s Rainbow, with music by Burton Lane, Annie Get Your Gun, with music and lyrics by Irving Berlin, and Lerner and Loewe’s Brigadoon, along with the mostly overlooked St. Louis Woman, with music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and a song that would become a standard in the Great American Songbook.
The consistently excellent cast of nine (in order of appearance: Ben Jones, Klea Blackhurst, Jenny Lee Stern, Sal Viviano, Jason Graae, Neil Devlin, Molly Bremer, Kyle Scatliffe, and Michael Winther) brought their stellar voices to the songs they were paired with, capturing the stylings of the era and its stars, embracing the emotions inherent in the lyrics, the characters, and the stories they represented, moving around the stage or dancing to the rhythms of the music, and directly interacting and joking with Siegel and the enthusiastically appreciative audience.
From the smooth vocals of Jones, who opened with the slow-paced “You and the Night and the Music” and returned in the second act with the ecstatically upbeat “Almost Like Being in Love” (both building to a crescendo and ending with impressive long notes), to the forceful intensity, strong vibrato, and telling facial expressions and gestures of Scatliffe on “There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon for New York,” the exquisitely smooth, velvety voice, consummate breath control, and profoundly affecting delivery of Winther on “From This Day On” and “Autumn in New York” (a genuine equal to Sinatra’s iconic rendition), and the resonant crooning of Viviano on “I Get a Kick Out of You” (shooting Siegel a sideways glance, then shaking his head, with the mention of “cocaine”), “Old Devil Moon,” and “Come to Me, Bend to Me” (enacting the romantic number, affecting a Scottish accent, getting down on his knees, then adding a laugh at the end by asking Siegel to help him get up), each and every selection was a highlight of the respective Broadway seasons and of this spectacular show.
The hilarious Graae likewise brought down the house with his tuneful and sidesplitting performances of “You’re The Top” (fidgeting with a clarinet, a poem, and a hand-held mirror) and “When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love” (unexpectedly ending with a split), as did Blackhurst, whose powerhouse vocals take their inspiration from Ethel Merman (on whom she’s done extensive research), as heard in her vigorous belting (and segments of scatting) on “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” and her high-octane version of “I Got the Sun in the Mornin’,” while tapping her feet to the beat. And Stern’s terrific combination of singing, dancing, and acting rendered her blockbuster versions of “Anything Goes” and “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart,” and her conjuring of the spirit of Judy Garland in “Come Rain or Come Shine,” supremely entertaining.
Siegel also provided a spotlight for his “Broadway Rising Stars” Devlin, who brought sincere emotion to “There But for You Go I” and “Fun To Be Fooled” (a last-minute addition to the show, with only 24 hours to rehearse), and Bremer, singing to him in the optimistic “Let’s Take a Walk around the Block” and bringing her semi-operatic voice to the romantic “They Say It’s Wonderful” (first performed by Merman in her own distinctive style in Annie Get Your Gun). The concert concluded with a full-company finale, led by Blackhurst, on “There’s No Business Like Show Business” – an uplifting and heartfelt tribute to Broadway and the performing arts, by and for the people who love them.
If you missed this year’s opening concert, two more installments of Broadway by the Season will follow on April 21 and June 28, so mark your calendar and get your tickets now for these always enjoyable and illuminating walks down memory lane with Siegel and his sensational changing roster of musical talents.
Running Time: Approximately two hours, including an intermission.
Broadway by the Season played on Friday, March 28, 2025, at Kaufman Music Center, Merkin Hall, 129 West 67th Street, NYC. For tickets to upcoming shows on April 21 and June 28 (priced at $79-94, including fees), go online.
