“Simply” Edie, statuesque, leggy, and sassy dancer—in all her perpetual motion—and singer, fresh from Las Vegas and Cirque du Soleil and, recently, Provincetown and Ogunquit, made a welcome return to Cherry Grove for the first time since 2006, at the Tides, to entertain at the Ice Palace, with DJ Chuck McTague responsible for music, lights, and sound. Alan Cumming, her colleague in the Broadway revival of “The Threepenny Opera,” was in the front row.
“Baby, it’s alright (Edie’s back on Fire Island),” she sang on entering and had us singing along with her. “When I’m happy, I dance,” she declared, dancing even as she spoke, and saying, “I have to wind down or I don’t know where I’ll wind up.” Edie took us on a journey down “Route 66,” complete with a first couple of kicks and pirouettes. For a sensuous “Sway,” she brought theatrical producer and singer Ron to the stage to cha-cha, unrehearsed, with her. She drank a toast to Carol Channing: “May she live for 100 more years!”
Edie let us know what it takes to get to “The Big Time,” with more high kicks. In a quiet interlude, in “Guess Who I Saw Today (my dear),” she took a moody look at betrayal. She adapted “’Cause I’m a Woman, W-O-M-A-N,” making it about being from Portland OR, as “’Cause I’m from Oregon, O-R-E-G-O-N” and, in a United Kingdom moment, dedicated a Lulu song (“The boat that I row”) to Cumming.
In an Ann-Margret number, Edie reveled in the situation of having “13 Men and Me the Only Gal in Town” and gave us an unusually reflective take on “I Will Survive” before concluding with an up-tempo verse. She continued, aptly, with “I Want to Be a Rockette,” with, naturally, many more kicks toward the ceiling, and sang an a cappella bit of “Mack the Knife” to Alan Cumming. Edie took her leave of us by donning a pair of high white boots to perform Nancy Sinatra song “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”