Whenever I’m in need of a laugh, I read my old columns — or watch Carly Sakolove’s “Send in the Clowns” video.
Who, you might be wondering?
A few years ago, a theater friend sent me the link to a YouTube video called “Broadway Divas ‘Send in the Clowns.’” When these things come my way, I usually hit the delete button. But I watched this one — and fell out of my chair laughing.
The clip featured snippets of great divas singing Stephen Sondheim’s most popular song. But the voices weren’t theirs. The singer was Sakolove, whom I’d never heard of, and she did spot-on imitations of a phlegmy Bernadette Peters, a craggy Elaine Stritch, a nasally Patti LuPone, a twee Julie Andrews and, most hilariously, an off-key Catherine Zeta-Jones, who, in the 2009 revival of “A Little Night Music,” often searched high and low for the correct key.
Sakolove, a struggling musical theater actress, made the video on a lark, and posted it first on Facebook. Within 24 hours, it had 4,000 hits, which is the equivalent of a Kardashian-size following today. Sakolove turned her talent into a club act — “I Hear Voices” — which I caught at the Duplex in the West Village.
Now, Sakolove has broadened her range of imitations, and opens a new show — “I’m Every Woman” — Wednesday at 54 Below.
“This one’s a bit more for the masses,” she tells me. “I’ve added Bette Midler, Shakira, Adele and Celine Dion. But there’s a little section of the Broadway ones as well. You’ve got to give the people what they want!”
Sakolove writes specialty material, sings it and puts it on YouTube. After LuPone snatched a cellphone out the hands of a woman who was texting during a performance of the play “Shows for Days” at Lincoln Center, Sakolove wrote a Patti parody called “Cellphones at Shows,” which she sang to the tune of “Anything Goes.”
Times have changed
That annoying and awful glow
People can’t even watch the show
Texting someone they wanna blow!
“I started doing these voices when I was 10 and in love with musical theater,” says Sakolove, 29. “They were terrible. But then, when I was 14, I played Dorothy in a school production of ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ During the show, a woman turned to my mother and said, ‘She’s lip-syncing.’ I wasn’t. I was doing Judy Garland. It just came out of me.”
Sakolove’s Garland is another miraculous imitation. So, too, are her Idina Menzel, her Carol Channing and her Heather Headley.
But she struggles with Barbra Streisand and Kristin Chenoweth.
“I got hate e-mail for not putting Streisand on the ‘Send in the Clowns’ video,” she says. “Somebody wrote and said, ‘How dare you not do her.’ I wrote back and said, ‘I can’t do her justice, yet. I’m not going to give you a crappy version of Barbra Streisand.’ As for Kristin Chenoweth, my timbre just doesn’t go there. But I’m still trying, and I have a feeling that one day it’s going to click, and out she’ll come.”
Speaking of divas, a real one — the great Betty Buckley — must not be missed as Big Edie Bouvier Beale in “Grey Gardens” at the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor. Buckley stars opposite Rachel York in this haunting revival of the 2006 Broadway musical. It runs until Aug. 30. I’m checking it out next week.
And if you happen to be in Provincetown, Mass., on Sept. 3 or 4, you’ll run into me at the Peregrine Theatre Ensemble leading the standing ovation for Buckley when she performs songs from her album “Ghostlight.”
I love that album, and I love this diva!