Preview of 'Red Hot Mama' at Seven Angels Theatre

Red Hot Mama: The Sophie Tucker Story zings to life as Sharon McNight is featured as the role of Sophie Tucker, a stand-out known for her brassy, zaftig quality appearing from burlesque to Broadway. Red Hot Mama focuses on the life of Tucker using her music as a guide. Show dates are February 15-March 11. Evenings at 8 PM and matinees at 2 PM.

Red Hot Mama, written by Sharon McNight, and musical arrangements by Stan Freeman, features Tony award nominee Sharon McNight (Starmites) in a “musical tribute” to the legendary comedienne Sophie Tucker. A star for nearly a decade, Tucker became a stand-out in the late 20’s and 30’s. Originally from Connecticut, her songs include “Some of These Days”, “After You’ve Gone”, and her so-called “naughty songs” (“There’s Company in the Parlor”, “Girls”, “Come on Down”). “McNight gives the performance of a lifetime.” —Los Angeles Times. “Without missing a beat, McNight delivers a must- see show” —The Chicago Sun-Times.

Tickets range from $40 to 55 depending on the day and time of the performance. Doors and Devil’s Corner Bar open one hour before the show. Plus, there is a Special Opening Post Show Party on February 17. Meet Sharon after the show and have some great food. To purchase tickets call the Seven Angels Theatre box office at 203-757-4676, go online at sevenangelstheatre.org, or stop in at 1 Plank Road in Waterbury. Free Parking. Just off I-84

Sharon McNight made her Broadway debut in 1989 in “Starmites”, creating the role of Diva, and receiving a Tony award nomination as “Best Leading Actress in a Musical” for her performance.
The singer/comedienne’s regional credits include Amanda McBroom’s “Heartbeats” at the Pasadena Playhouse, and an award winning Dolly in “Hello, Dolly” at the Peninsula Civic Light Opera. Sharon was Sister Hubert in “Nunsense” in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where she received the Bay Area Critics Circle award for her performance.

McNight began her career in San Francisco where she received her Master of Arts degree in directing from San Francisco State. She taught a City College of S.F., has been a master teacher at the Eugene O’Neill Center, and is currently on the faculty of the Cabaret Conference at Yale University.
She has played from Moose Hall to Carnegie Hall and anywhere the check doesn’t bounce. She has won six San Francisco Cabaret Gold awards, 3 Cable Car awards, and many others. She has six solo recordings to her credit, and can sing any genre of music.

McNight is single and lives in Hollywood. She has been the forefront in the fight against AIDS since the early eighties, and was chosen twice as the honorary chair of the San Francisco AIDS Emergency Fund. She was one of two heterosexual women chosen as the Grand Marshall of San Francisco’s Gay Parade.

Stan Freeman (Arrangements) has proved his talents in just about every phase of the entertainment business. As a serious pianist, he has appeared with most of our major symphony orchestras and in recitals in every major city and has recorded with Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker. He is represented by 15 solo albums on Columbia and Epic Records. As a composer and lyricist, he was awarded an Emmy for his contribution to the Carol Burnett Show. He has also written special musical material for various popular television shows. He has been represented on Broadway as the composer of two musicals, “I Had A Ball” and “Lovely Ladies and Kind Gentlemen” and Off-Broadway with “Secrets Every Smart Traveler Should Know”, which ran for two years. He received the Drama-Logue award for Best Actor in his performance as Oscar Levant in the one man show, “At Wit’s End”. His wit and musical genius will be missed.

Sophie Tucker with Frank Sinatra

Sophie Tucker was a powerful presence in American entertainment for nearly sixty years. Not only was she physically imposing, but she also had a powerful, distinctive voice. Her particular strength was the ‘naughty song’ delivered with such gusto that many commentators began to categorize her as ‘a force of nature’.

Deep down, Sophie Tucker was an inner person with cares and heartaches and hopes and dreams that didn’t appear on stage. It was a long way from the farmlands of Eastern Europe where Sophie was born to the glittering nightclubs and the vaudeville palaces of the United States. She started poor and made herself rich by hard work as well as talent, and eventually became the financial head of her family. Sophie suffered a good deal in her early years because of her heavier appearance. She married three times; but none lasted. She gave birth to her only child while still a teenager, and left her son in the care of her family to go into show business.

After multiple singing jobs and gigs, she clicked at Tony Pastor’s restaurant. This resulted in a tour with a burlesque circuit during which she met a fellow rising star, Fanny Brice. Sophie was spotted by Mark Klaw and was asked to tryout for the “Follies of 1909". At the Atlantic City tryout, her three numbers were greeted with huge ovations. When the show finally made it to New York, she was limited to only one number. Her recording career began in 1910 with Thomas Edison’s company, making two minute cylinders, and ended mid-fifties with “philo-sophie” songs and risque hits, i.e. “Mr. Siegel, Make It Legal”.

She signed with booking agent William Morris whose agency represented her until her death in 1966. She played the Keith Circuit, vaudeville’s aristocracy, in 1913, and the fabled Palace in New York City in 1914. But it took as much energy to stay on top as it did to get there. Silent movies were already beginning to erode vaudeville’s power. Sophie changed her act in 1916, and began to appeared with a jazz band behind her. In 1921, she disbanded the group, and interviewed a youth named Ted Shapiro. Their musical relationship lasted for forty-five years. Radio was coming in and more vaudevillians left the stage for this new medium. Sophie continued to play nightclubs and go on foreign tours. In 1927, “The Jazz Singer” brought sound to movies, and the eventual demise of vaudeville. Vaudeville ended, for Sophie at least, with the Palace fire of 1932.

Essentially a vaudeville headliner, Sophie broke into the legitimate theater with “Marry Mary” and “Louisiana Lou”, both in 1911. She co-starred with Jack Hulbert in London in “Follow A Star” (1930) and her big Broadway smash was Cole Porter’s “Leave It To Me!” (1938), with William Gaxton, plus George Jessel’s “High Kickers” (1941). In film, she starred in “Honky Tonk” (1928), and had lead roles in “Gay Love” (GB-1934), “Broadway Melody of 1937" as Judy Garland’s mother, and played herself in “The Joker Is Wild” (1957), starring Frank Sinatra. As a nightclub headliner, she played many famous locations; and in 1944, was the first headliner to play The Last Frontier in a desert hamlet called Las Vegas.
Sophie Tucker was a magnificent entertainer, a luckless gambler, a generous friend, a tireless trouper, an unforgettable character, . . . truly the last of the Red Hot Mamas.

This is the story of the legendary entertainer, Sophie Tucker, whose remarkable career spanned sixty years. It is a chronicle reflecting the history of 20th century show business, a testimony to Tucker’s extraordinary talent and resilience. From 1906 to 1966, she performed in burlesque and vaudeville, on some of the first records of Thomas Edison, and starred in one of the earliest talking pictures. She was one of the first entertainers to play Las Vegas, frequently appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, and continued to be a major attraction at supper clubs throughout the world.

“Red Hot Mama” is the story of a woman - her professional triumphs and personal sacrifices during sixty years of survival in show business. Illustrating the contrast between Sophie’s on-stage persona, “The Last of the Red Hot Mamas”, and the real behind-the-scenes woman, it encompasses six decades of entertainment utilizing the original musical material that made Tucker famous.

This one woman show, originally called “The Sophie Tucker Songbook”, began as a one night only, 55 minute cabaret presentation at Rainbow and Stars in March ‘96 as part of the ASCAP Sunday showcase. It was expanded for performance at the Spoleto Music Festival, and evolved into a ninety minute biographical tribute that played in cabarets to critical acclaim in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. After ecstatic reviews, the two act play version was born called “Red Hot Mama”, the phrase synonymous in the lyric and legend of Sophie Tucker.

“Red Hot Mama” continued its developmental process with productions at the Denver Center, the Lucille Lortel’s White Barn Theatre, and the McCallum Theatre, Palm Desert. The "concert version" of the show was expanded to a theatrical piece at Off-Broadway's York Theatre where it played for three months.