Dear Miss Sweetie, actor and entertainer, made a welcome return to Fire Island, after several seasons’ absence, in “One Night with Sweetie,” at the Ice Palace on August 19, with DJ Chuck McTague assisting. The show was autobiographical, with Sweetie sharing her story in song and speech.
Elegant and bejeweled in a white creation by Norell Gardner, Sweetie dedicated her dynamic opening pairing of Vicki Carr songs, “For Once in My Life” and “After Today,” to longtime friends and fans Bobby “Cobra” Scherffius and Victor Alfieri. In memory of her father, who worked at General Motors in Detroit, and from whom, she said, she inherited her work ethic, Sweetie gave us Dolly Parton’s “Smokey Mountain Memories,” and her mother, from Tennessee, with “Just a Housewife,” from “Working,” about pride in a homemaker’s accomplishments. Sweetie spoke of the shock of meeting her father’s girlfriend of 30 years at his wake, which led her to perform quintessential ‘other woman’s’ song “Fifty Percent,” from “Ballroom.”
Sweetie went on to consider her contrasting grandmothers “Maw,” who let her wear her jewelry, makeup, and high heels, and “Mamaw,” who cooked Southern-style, and the cousin who introduced her to dancing to music by artists “of color.” Angry rap and song “Love Is Blind;” Etta James blues number “Deep in the Night,” when she talked of the men she’s been meeting in Ridgewood, Queens; and a lively song, with Holly Dae, Busted, and Al as her backups, made up Sweetie’s next group of selections.
Reveling in specializing in dramatic breakup scenes, Sweetie offered Wynonna Judd’s slit-your-wrists “Is It Over Yet,” but recalled the onset of puberty and fantasies about the “passion” of Luke and Laura on television’s “General Hospital” with what she thinks of as a “musical orgasm song,” Bettye Lavette doing “Love Reign O’er Me.”
In conclusion, Sweetie spoke frankly of her diagnosis with cancer—about fighting it and, knock on wood, surviving it—and left us with the song “Remember Me (as a good thing).”
Sweetie will return here on August 30 for a “greatest hits” show.