The month of June began and it was Lavinia Draper’s birthday, as well as her first show of the season, at the Ice Palace, with DJ RDK, Richard Kennedy, assisting.
In fresh and full voice, Lavinia dulcetly saluted the impending season with “Summertime,” from “Porgy and Bess,” and waxing torchy, but brave, belted out “But the World Goes ’Round.” Moving away from opera and Broadway, she turned to earthy renditions of “Honkytonk Woman” and “Light My Fire,” and then returned to musicals for a wrenching “Maybe This Time.” “You Light up My Life” was her reverent interlude, after which she issued a sultry invitation to us to “(come to the) Cabaret,” complete with high kicks.
Lavinia let us know that she was up for adventure with two songs from “Rent,” “Out Tonight” and, with Sonny Shores joining her, “Take Me or Leave Me.” Lavinia and Sonny’s encore was “Suddenly Seymour,” as “Suddenly Sonny,” from “Little Shop of Horrors.”
For Jimmy, the Australian in the audience, she sang “Hopelessly Devoted to You,” Olivia Newton-John’s number from “Grease.” She sang Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe” from atop the bar, and continued with Amy Winehouse (“Valerie”) and Elvis (“Burning Love”). She poured out her heart in “I Still Haven’t Found what I’m Looking for,” asking us to imagine she was Cher, doing it as a big Vegas production number.
Sonny brought out a birthday cheese cake for Lavinia and, after she blew out the candles, she turned pensive with “Just a little too far” and, from “Fame,” “Out Here on My Own.” After a cathartic “I’m the Only One (Who’ll walk across the fire for you),” she went on to “You and I,” relating the line “Something about this place” to Fire Island. With “We Belong,” she encouraged connection between us all. Jimmy joined her for “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.”
Lavinia’s disco medley encompassed the likes of “You Sexy Thing (I Believe in Miracles”); “Bad Girls;” “Ring My Bell;” “Don’t Leave Me this Way” sung to go-go boy Zack, whom she stripped on stage and then joined on the bar; and “It’s Raining Men.” To close her show, she lamented “(We’ve got) One Night Only,” from “Dreamgirls;” confided “(I’ve got a) Lust for Life;” and vowed “One Way or Another (I’m gonna getcha).”
Hear Lavinia at the Ice Palace on Mondays at 7 p.m. and Wednesdays at 9 p.m.