Before her sublime encore of Over the Rainbow, and her fifth standing ovation, Linda Eder apologized to Friday’s opening night crowd at the Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown.
For pandemic reasons, she would not be doing her usual meet-and-greet after the show.
“It’s not quite the opening we wanted,” Eder said.
Calling the audience a crowd is generous. The orchestra section of the 1,300-seat theater appeared to be about half full. Masks and proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test only go so far in the age of Delta and breakthrough infections, evidently.
Yet those who ventured inside were flashing irrepressible smiles when the masks came off outside.
“She exceeded my expectations,” said Regina Benjamin, a retired Verizon research scientist from Kinnelon who is such a Linda Eder fan, she can tell you right down to the minute and seconds where Eder appears on the 1999 video My Favorite Broadway: The Leading Ladies.
Slideshow photos by Kevin Coughlin. Click/hover on images for captions:
The last show Benjamin and her husband David saw at MPAC was the last show: Temple Grandin’s autism talk on March 11, 2020. The ensuing pandemic shutdown “truly tested the resolve of our theater,” said MPAC President Allison Larena.
It survived with government aid, furloughs, outdoor concerts (called drive-ins), virtual performances, online classes, limited-capacity shows and finally, in recent weeks, full-capacity shows.
This one was the official kickoff of MPAC’s 27th season. The audience included Bud Mayo, for whom the Community Theatre was renamed; Jeff Kirby of the F.M. Kirby Foundation; Morris Arts Executive Director Tom Werder; and Mayor Tim Dougherty, who called the performing arts center “one of our greatest assets.”
Eder weathered the pandemic by teaching some virtual classes. She turned 60, and decided to stop dying her hair. Performing online, though, was a line she could not cross.
“There’s nothing quite like a live performance,” the star of Jekyll & Hyde explained to her faithful on Friday, with a few disclaimers. After such a long hiatus, she confessed, she felt like a “rusty old machine.”
A couple of false starts only added to the charm: It’s those fasten-your-seat belts takeoffs and landings that separate “live” from live-streamed. And if this voice was rusty, please, oxidize me.
The nearly two-hour show was titled Judy Garland: Me and My Shadow, an homage to the icon who inspired an 8-year-old Eder through a flickering TV screen.
Eder, a former Star Search winner, conveyed Garland’s glitter and sadness as a master interpreter, not an impersonator. She revealed as much about herself as about her idol in her treatments of such classics as The Man That Got Away from A Star Is Born (the 1954 version), Me and My Shadow, You Made Me Love You and The Boy Next Door.
There was plenty of pizazz in San Francisco and The Trolley Song, from Meet Me in St. Louis. Musing about today’s raunchy, leave-nothing-to-the-imagination lyrics in pop music, Eder proceeded to infuse Garland’s Do It Again with an “incredibly risqué” sensibility that surely would have gotten Mickey Rooney’s attention in the old Andy Hardy series.
Eder added a sultry, seductive Stormy Weather, accompanied by the smoky standup bass of David Finck.
At times the band showed it’s still regaining its collective sea legs — the five-piece ensemble overpowered Eder on By Myself and a couple of other numbers.
But Aaron Heick supplied delightful backings on sax, flute and piccolo. Keyboard player James Olmstead, drummer Eric Halvorson, and pianist Billy Stritch — Liza Minnelli’s longtime accompanist and co-writer of the Reba McIntyre hit Does He Love You–rounded out a powerhouse roster that made dancing an option for the Latin-grooved You Go to My Head and the jaunty Before the Parade Passes By.
The set list included a nod to Judy’s daughter Liza, with her hit Losing My Mind. One of the evening’s most moving Garland songs was one written about her, The Rainbow’s End by Jack Murphy. Eder dedicated a wistful, dreamy Smile to Garland.
Yet many of the heart-stopping, lump-in-your throat moments came when Eder detoured from Judy to Linda territory.
She pulled up a stool and earned her first standing ovation with a searing rendition of Bring Him Home from Les Mis.
Fans were up again after Someone Like You, her signature number from Jekyll & Hyde.
And again after Vienna, a hit for Eder co-written by her ex-, Frank Wildhorn, creator of Jekyll & Hyde.
All wonderful. But none could top the electrifying Man of La Mancha. Eder, who seems to span more octaves than a piano, made the sign of the cross and glanced impishly toward the heavens as her “rusty old machine” roared towards the crescendo.
Regina Benjamin probably was the only person in the building who noticed that Eder veered from the ethereal heights she scaled on that Broadway DVD back in the 1990s. Did. Not. Matter.
“She can sell anything,” Benjamin said.
Maybe this wasn’t quite the opening night Linda Eder wanted.
But it felt like the one we needed.
She should be wearing a mask. This was a super spreader event.