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The night
was stormy and unseasonably cool for Miami
Beach. But then, why not? That Mistress of
Seduction, Joey Arias, was in town, starring
with her salaciously delicious partner in
crime, Sherry Vine, in SINsational, their
globetrotting cabaret show. The wind whipped
the palms, as well as the flaps of the
Spiegeltent. Inside the mirror-slathered
Salon Perdu, the audience was a veritable
composite of Miami Beach café society: Mr.
Miami Beach George Neary, Octavio Campos,
Dale Stine, Edison Farrow, Nestor Paz—all of
us soaking up the torchy ambiance in a
spiegeltent where the likes of Marlene
Dietrich had once performed.
Oh, weren’t we all so smart to have let that
largest gay cruise in history sail away
without us? For while the gay cruise was
away, two of New York’s best had come down
to the Beach to play. And suddenly, there
they were, in all their Kit Kat Club finery,
in front of a bank of absinthe green lights:
Joey Arias and Sherry Vine, as Roxie Hart
and Velma Kelly, singing “All That Jazz.” Or
“all that jizz”—as Joey had it, making
certain that we understood the kind of night
we were in for. Nothing was too raunchy for
these girls: they’ve been around. Or as
Sherry explained early on, “I’m just a dirty
cheap Jewish blonde whore from New York.”
Legends in their own time, stars of Broadway
and Cirque de Soleil, as well as the dearly
loved Bar d’O, these two had performed
SINsational in Sydney and Berlin, but it had
been years since they’d last performed
together, in Miami—and as Vine said with a
wink and a smile, “Thanks for the warm hand
on our opening.” Mistresses of deadpan
delivery, both of them.
Lest one imagine, however, that this was
your run-of-the-mill dq show, with snappy dq
repartee, there’s the matter of That Voice.
And when Arias took his verse of that Johnny
Mercer chestnut, “Day In Day Out,” the mood
was set. Beloved for his channeling of
Billie Holiday, Arias possesses an
instrument that rewinds time, back to the
days when 52nd Street was Swing Alley, “the
street that never sleeps.”
But first, it was Sherry Vine’s show—while
Arias took a powder. No timid nightingale
herself, Vine ripped into “When You’re Good
To Mama,” like she was auditioning for
Kander and Ebb—followed by a tune of her
own, a raucous mash-up of all those
“Milkshake” derivatives called “So
Delicious.” And if that weren’t enough, she
had the audience in hysterics with her riff
on Madonna’s “Jump,” renamed “Bump,” and
which included the lyric, “Just one little
bump. I’m ready to bump.”
With her hourglass figure and Balanchine
legs, Vine’s the kind of statuesque
bombshell who might well have been the model
for Jessica Rabbit, but it was her ability
to wring laughter from a line as mundane as
“Ernie, it’s DELICIOUS” that made
comparisons to Lucille Ball almost
inevitable. Possessed of the same gift for
physical comedy, and every bit as gorgeous,
Vine made the audience hers merely by
saying, “I’m having a Tyra moment” or “When
you’re ready, baby, stick it in.” And ever
gracious, she knew when to cede the
spotlight—to THAT VOICE.
A vision in black satin, there she was: Joey
Arias in the room’s center. One blue spot,
mike in hand, singing “You’ve Changed.” No,
not just singing it—living it, and making
those lyrics personal, evoking not only
Billie Holiday, and all of Holiday’s
disappointments, but our own heartbreaks as
well: "I can't understand/You've
changed/You've forgotten the words/‘I love
you’” That sensual voice, tortured by
love—before she was off again, regaling us
with tales of Cole Porter’s sexploits with
sailors, which provided fresh illumination
into her version of Porter’s “Love For
Sale.”
Not to be outdone by Vine’s spontaneity with
the audience, Arias, too, reached into the
front row—and pulled up Paul from Miami. A
straight man, whose girlfriend had
conveniently disappeared into the bathroom,
Paul proved the perfect foil for Arias’s
antics, which included the insertion of her
microphone deep into the nether regions of
Paul’s pants, whereupon Arias sang to Paul’s
crotch, that rough and breathy voice
circling around Spiegeltent. Oh, Billie, oh,
Marlene—surely the girls above were
shrieking with laughter as loud as the rest
of us.
And when Vine returned to sing “That Old
Black Magic” with Arias, it was indeed
magical. For their finale, the two of them
ripped into “All of Me,” trading epithets
and sobriquets like tennis pros acing each
other, singing with barely-contained
laughter “Mistress of the Dark” and “Queen
of the Internet,” “Blond Jewish Whore” and
“Aztec Goddess”—until the two of them were
prostrate on the circular stage, singing
cheek to cheek, their obvious affection and
respect for each other undeniable and
generous.
To see these two sharing a stage was to be
grateful for the legends that have preceded
them—whose gifts Vine and Arias have
received, revived and transformed into their
own sui generis entertainment. SINsational
could hardly be more apt—although the real
sin would be in missing this audacious show.
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