Eric Comstock & Barbara Fasano: Cabaret Comes to Cleveland

On April 21, husband-and-wife performers Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano brought the buzz they have been creating Saturday nights at Birdland in Manhattan to a rainy Friday night in Cleveland, Ohio, for a special charity show for The Musical Theater Project. The Nick and Nora Charles of cabaret bantered and performed choice selections in a show called “From Sinatra to Sondheim to Sting,” much to the delight of the sold-out audience. The evening opened where the musical Chicago ends—with the Kander and Ebb song “Nowadays.” Fasano belted out the lyrics with Comstock’s skilled support behind the piano. It was a perfect blend of sophistication, energy, and wit balancing jazz with a Broadway sound. No surprise that the New Yorker magazine recently wrote of these two performers, “a little jazz—with its insistence on spontaneity and invigorating swing—can give cabaret a needed kick in the pants.” Despite the cold and dampness outside, all was warm and dry (wit) inside the Tudor Arms Hotel, formerly a swanky private club opened in the 1933. Comstock and Fasano’s show perfectly fit into the jazz heavy history of the hotel, a place where Duke Ellington once played. Among the song selection for the evening were classics like Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer’s “How Little We Know” (1944), Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” (1926), and period-appropriate Harold Arl