Last night Debbie Wileman descended upon Birdland with her new show, From London With Love, and based on the reaction it could have just as easily been called To Debbie With Love. The audience was filled with adoring and vocal fans that gave Debbie two standing ovations and demanded an encore.
The show itself was sublime and deserving of the loving response.
Billy Stritch, a great singer himself, is a piano playing gift from heaven for all other singers. His approach as an accompanist is intuitive and sympathetic, he never overpowers, yet still manages to keep his own musical identity. And when the piano and the singer have a musical conversation the result is sometimes humorous, sometimes tender, sometimes dramatic, but always magical. There are certain pianists that singers feel safe with, Mike Renzi was one, Michael Kanin is another one, and Billy Stritch is probably the best of the bunch. Whether he is playing behind, Liza Minnelli, Tony Bennett, Debbie Wileman, Marilyn Maye, or some unknown kid at Jim Caruso’s Cast Party, his instincts are always spot on and his playing is like a big comfy cushion of a safety net to whomever he is accompanying.
It’s hard for me to be objective about Debbie Wileman as a singer because I absolutely adore her as a person, but I’ll try. First off there were celebrities scattered all around the room, an Academy Award nominated actress, a popular Blogger and brooch enthusiast, a renowned Carol Channing impersonator, a celebrated producer, and a lot of other swells and glittery Manhattan types. But after the first number (Judy Garland’s Love Medley) they were all slaves to Debbie Wileman.
Wileman isn’t just a singer, she is a full fledged entertainer. She cracks jokes, dances and struts, mugs, does impersonations, and looks gorgeous while doing it. She can croon, she can be sultry and sexy, she can sound clear as a bell and then all of a sudden have a gravelly growl, and then there is the power. Her voice is a spectacular force of nature akin to Niagara Falls and the Aurora Borealis. Rarely do you hear a big sound like that coming out of a person, and when you do it’s coming from a Garland, an Aretha, a Jonas Kauffman, or a Streisand, and now the great big voice for the 21st century belongs to Debbie Wileman. And it’s not just that she can belt, it’s how she trills, bends notes, modulates, improvises, and adds new dimensions while belting that shows her genius as a performer and as a musician. Her set list was eclectic, we heard Jazz, Hollywood, Broadway, and a bit of sixties Pop. I have never heard another singer sing Sinatra’s London By Night, but Debbie Wileman did, and she made it her own. She sang low and quiet and sincerely, and you could have heard a pin drop as the audience was so transfixed by the gentleness of her sound. The love she felt for the song and her hometown were felt by all. Another highlight was Since You Left New York, one of Billy Stritch’s own compositions (with Sandy Knox) that I first fell in love with when I saw the video that Billy and Debbie made of it during the pandemic. They also did another Stritch song, the dramatic and emotional Does He Love You, which Wileman and Stritch performed for laughs, and got them! The show closed with an all out, take no prisoners, rendition of I Could Go On Singing that had the audience jumping to their feet and screaming like teenage girls at a Benson Boone concert. And then Wileman came back and topped herself by singing New York, New York as an encore, accompanied by the man who probably accompanied Liza Minnelli on that song at least 500 times. And you know what, Wileman didn’t embarrass herself, she took Liza’s signature song and gave it everything she had and ended up owning it, at least for last night (we still love you Liza). All in all it was a night, and a glorious gift from London with love. Thank you Billy Stritch, and thank you Debbie Wileman, I think you’re the most.
