Ms. Tucker Will See You Now, A Hilarious & Fearless Homage to Jazz Great Sophie Tucker
4 min read
Laural Meade Photograph by Craig Allyn Cochrane
Winner Best Cabaret Concert Performance – Ticketholder Awards 2023!
Ms. Tucker Will See You Now, writer and performer Laural Meade’s rollicking cabaret theater piece, returns in 2024 to the historic Gardenia Supper Club (7066 Santa Monica Blvd. 90038) in Hollywood. With special guest Gregory Nabours at the piano, Meade will perform the show Saturday, February 3rd. Reservations are by phone only and can be made at 323-467-7444. Doors open & dinner service begins at 7pm, showtime is 9pm. $20 cover charge + a $14 drink min.
Songs! Jokes! Stories! All risqué! The show combines the pizzazz of Sophie Tucker’s bawdy song catalog with raucous audience interaction and personal revelations. Using the extraordinary life and career of one of the 20th Century’s greatest entertainers (known as “the last of the red hot mamas“), Laural Meade channels the rollicking energy that made jazz great Sophie Tucker the most sought-after nightclub entertainer of her day.
The evening also samples decidedly dirty jokes from many of the women performers Ms. Tucker inspired along the way – such as Bette Midler, Joan Rivers, Belle Barthe, and Phyllis Diller. Meade began developing the show in 2022 as a series of house concerts throughout Los Angeles. In 2023, she formed a relationship with The Gardenia through their weekly open mic, and first performed the piece there in March to a standing-room only crowd. In June she began a monthly performance residency that will continue through the end of the year.
The show features 13 of Ms. Tucker’s signature songs, including “Some of These Days,” “I Don’t Want to Get Thin,” “Yiddishe Mama,” and “The Man I Love.” Of this last song, Travis Michael Holder of ticketholdersLA.com said Meade “delivers an arrestingly poignant and indelibly memorable version of Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’ that alone could make the professional cabaret rise of a brave and intensely gifted late-blooming college professor something as worth appreciating as the career of Ms. Tucker herself.” Holder also described the show as “An incredible solo turn…a perfect evening.”
Elliot Zwiebach at Cabaret Scenes Magazine noted that “Meade lets loose her inner Sophie and charms” calling her “A powerful singer… with a thrilling voice.”
Laural Meade makes theater and music in her home-town of Los Angeles. Her singing has been featured in settings both profane (experimental productions at Largo at the Coronet, The Bootleg, Fais Do-do, Getty Villa, and Los Angeles Theater Center among others) and sacred (any number of churches and weddings). Her original playwriting focuses on titillating figures from early 20th century American history and has been seen at venues as far ranging as the Mark Taper Forum and Speeltheater in Edam, Holland. She is the recipient of grants from the MAP Fund/Rockefeller Award, the California Arts Council, and the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department. Her original theater has been recognized with Ovation, LA Weekly and Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Circle awards. When she’s not interpreting the ribald song catalog of Sophie Tucker, you can find her working with aspiring artists as a longtime member of the theater faculty at Occidental College.
Gregory Nabours lives and works in Los Angeles as a composer/lyricist and music director. His life in music has forayed into classical piano, jazz, film scoring, and choral music, with a focus on musical theater. He is the Resident Composer and a founding member of Coeurage Theatre Company. Gregory’s song cycle, The Trouble With Words, earned him an Ovation Award for Best Music and Lyrics for an Original Musical, as well as Best Musical in the Hollywood Fringe Festival. As a music director, Gregory’s work on the intimate theater production of The Color Purple earned him an Ovation Award, the LA Drama Critics Circle Award, the LA Weekly Award, and the NAACP Award for Best Musical Direction. Other credits include In the Heights, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Falsettos, Rent, The Wild Party, A New Brain, Spring Awakening, Into the Woods, Assassins, and The Full Monty. Current projects include music directing the immensely popular bi-monthly (Mostly) Musicals cabaret, in local appearances at The Rockwell, Vitello’s and The Federal.
Established in Hollywood in 1981 by Broadway performer Tom Rolla, The Gardenia is the oldest continuously-running supperclub in the United States. Living-room-like, with table-service-seating for just 60 patrons, the space attracts musical artists and audiences for whom lyric and melody are paramount. For 4+ decades, The Gardenia has been home to performers from all walks of the entertainment world, including a wide array of Rolla’s Broadway pals from Donna McKechnie to Camille Saviola, actors who sing from Marilu Henner to Sally Kellerman, and comedians from Bruce Villanch to Billy Barnes. Cabaret doyen Andrea Marcovicci starred in a series of pioneering performances produced by Rolla at The Gardenia in the late 1980’s that, as per the club’s written history, “changed the face of American cabaret for the next 40 years and beyond.” The Gardenia proudly continues this legacy, championing live music (current cabaret fave Maude Maggart credits The Gardenia for her rise) and serving as fertile ground for the next generation of “rising (and risen) stars.”
