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Before
Gaga, there was Joey. That would be Arias,
as in Joey Arias, the incomparable and
inimitable chanteuse and critic's darling,
long celebrated for her channeling of the
voice (and aura) of Billie Holiday. After a
six-year sabbatical in Las Vegas as the
Mistress of Seduction for Cirque du Soleil's
"Zumanity," Arias recently returned to her
downtown roots for her first New York
concerts in nearly a decade - and as Arias
made perfectly clear on her opening weekend
at the Abrons Arts Center at the Henry
Street Settlement, that new generation of
gender-bending, outré-costumed performers
owes more than a heavy-lidded wink to
Arias's groundbreaking persona.
As Arias recalls, it was at a party with
Andy Warhol, during a stint working at
Fiorucci's (the forerunner to Patricia
Field, for you youngsters), that her iconic
personality began its public evolution.
Equal parts femme fatale with the bawdy
humor of Mae West and a Joan Crawford
smolder, Arias's current persona
incorporates Fifties centerfold Betty Page
bangs with the wasp-waisted figure of a
Barbie Doll, from the square shoulders right
down to the impossibly vertical arch of her
feet, shod in don't-fuck-with-me-fellas
stilettos. Or as Arias jokingly refers to
it, "my cocaine waist, from Cirque
training," which makes Scarlett O'Hara's
eighteen-incher look downright obese.
At the Abrons, Arias took the stage sheathed
in a very Dior-ish "New Look" ensemble,
which was the result of a conversation Arias
had had with her costumer who'd asked how
she'd like to look for her new show. "How
about something a little Kim Novak?" she'd
suggested. "With color." At which point,
Arias gazed down at the murky,
reptile-scaled, serpentine brocade ensemble
encasing her Jessica Rabbit figure. Gazed
deadpan at the audience, then down at her
tenebrous suit. "Color," she said again. The
audience roared.
As much a Mistress of Delivery as seduction,
Arias has pitch-perfect command of her
audience, which, on Saturday night, was a
sold-out house of downtown habitués, many of
them bold-faced performers (including Justin
Bond, Penny Arcade, Randy Jones, ChiChi
Valenti) more than a few of whom have
followed Arias through the mirthfully
melodramatic chapters of her life - and as
they made clear from their thunderous
applause at the moment of her entrance,
there's no question as to why Arias is known
to them as The Goddess.
The concert that brought Arias back to the
downtown stage was a two-year labor of love
from inception to realization by wunderkind
producer, Earl Dax, who had previously
brought Arias and Sherry Vine to Spiegeltent,
and who has a proven track record of working
with legendary talent - and the choice of
the Abrons was particularly astute.
Originally built in 1915, the historic
350-seat proscenium playhouse has been home
to artists and performers such as Martha
Graham, Eartha Kitt, Agnes de Mille, Orson
Welles - and now Arias.
Backed by a four-piece band, led by bassist
and musical director Ben Allison, Arias
opened with a riotous version of Cream's
"White Room," a rock-n-roll number that left
the audience loudly cheering and Arias
contending, "That got my pussy all worked
up."
From there she dragged a wooden stool
forward, declaring, "One million dollar
production show here," her lips and eyes
working together in mischievous merriment.
A story about her recent performance with
Basil Twist in the Bergdorf windows for
Fashion Night Out during New York Fashion
Week, led into an anecdote about a woman
named Dolores "Lala" Brooks, the voice
behind Phil Spector's wall of sound - and
then into Arias's version of the Sixties
chestnut, "Be My Baby," which soon became an
audience sing along.
Stepping carefully (and with the assistance
of a comely, front-row lad) from the stage,
Arias roamed the celebrity-studded audience,
securing vocal cameos from the likes of
Justin Bond, Penny Arcade, and a
particularly stellar performance from Randy
Jones of the Village People. (As Bond later
said, laughing, "Fortunately, I knew the
words: 'Be my, be my baby. Be my baby
now.'")
Other concert highlights included Arias's
versions from the Beatles songbook,
including "A Hard Day's Night" and Arias's
hypnotizing, romantic rendition of
"Something," as well as the Supremes' "My
World Is Empty Without You," during which
Arias continually stressed the words
"without you, babe, without you," making the
song infinitely more about melancholic
yearning than at any time sung by Miss Ross.
And there was also Arias singing Burt
Bacharach’s "The Look of Love" - to her
brand-new baby: a French bulldog puppy. At
that point, Arias had stripped down to a
bustier and little else, save for her
stilettos - and if you think you saw it all
when Patti Lupone worked a tuba while
playing Mrs. Lovett, you're wrong.
For many in the audience, it was Arias as
Billie Holiday they had come to hear.
Growing up in California, Arias became
fascinated with Billie Holiday's voice,
particularly what she calls that "Billie
Holiday timbre, very sweet and soft. It's
not a shouting voice; it's sensitive." To
hear Arias sing Billie is a revelation - for
when Arias sings the Holiday canon, it's
less a matter of interpretation than it is a
spiritual incorporation: she's actually
inside the song. At one point during "God
Bless the Child," Arias's voice was little
more than a whisper - before she unleashed a
soaring, ethereal high note that took the
song into the realm of wrenching wonder.
Equally at home with "Them There Eyes" as
she is with "Why Don't You Do Right?"
(complete with audience hijinks), Arias
inhabits "Strange Fruit" as fully as Lady
Day - and on Saturday night, her searing
rendition, during the lyrics "from the
poplar trees," drew out the sibilance in the
word "trees" so that you heard the Southern
leaves shuddering in the breeze.
Even in the instrumental break between verse
and chorus, Arias continues singing - with
her body and soul - in a completely holistic
inhabitation of the material that reveals
multiple layers of experiential knowledge
and life-lived wisdom, as when she sang
"Good Morning Heartache" as a second encore.
Only a select few performers enable such
tangible connections with their audiences;
only the most sui generis artist seems able
to transcend the boards and the fourth wall,
thereby inviting every audience member deep
inside their soul. Garland was one; Arias is
another.
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