Husky-voiced singer-songwriter Ann Hampton Callaway has appeared eight times at the Colony Hotel’s Royal Room before her current engagement this week. While she has been much acclaimed, something was missing previously: Her younger sister Liz.
That has now been rectified with an 80-minute set, continuing through Saturday, that samples all three of the cabaret shows the sisters Callaway have concocted — Sibling Revelry, Relative Harmony and Boom! Individually, they are very entertaining performers, but together their voices blend exquisitely and their faux-jealousy over each other’s achievements is bitchy fun.
The evening opens with a duet called Here Come the Callaways, a peppy piece of special material penned by Ann that cleverly likens them to other family acts, from the Jacksons to the Brontes to the Kardashians. Not long after, they attack Cole Porter’s Friendship, a celebration of camaraderie, undercut by numerous cutting remarks between the lyrics.
On occasion, they cede the stage to one another for some standout solo turns. Ann, who tends toward jazz, demonstrated her facility for scat singing on Rhythm in My Nursery Rhymes, about growing up as a hipster, accompanying herself with vocal impressions of a trumpet, saxophone and other instruments.
Liz, the younger, shorter, thinner sister, has concentrated much of her career on the Broadway stage, including debuting in the original cast of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along. It is almost a cliché for a theatrical cabaret performer to pay tribute to the vocally and musically complex composer-lyricist, and Liz seemed headed right for such a misstep.
Instead, after seeming to blank on the words to Company’s triphammer Another Hundred People, she launched into a send-up of the challenge of singing Sondheim — Another Hundred Lyrics Just Went Out of My Brain. Incorporating the tempo-shifting challenge of several of his songs, the clever number was every bit as difficult as the real thing and Liz handled it flawlessly.
Boom!, their latest show, takes them both out of their familiar territory to songs of the ‘60s and ‘70s — Baby Boomer pop hits. Here, they continued the sibling theme, combining their voices on The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling, which lost nothing in the translation. And Liz got the crowd going on a pair of Petula Clark tunes — I Know a Place and Downtown, complete with a bit of audience sing-along.
Surely the standout selection of the evening was The Huge Medley from Sibling Revelry, a collection of female duets, mostly from the theater, including Bosom Buddies from Mame; Liz’s featured number from Miss Saigon, I Still Believe; and A Boy Like That, from West Side Story. Without sacrificing anything musically, the two performers often planted their tongues firmly in cheek with over-the-top histrionics.
Ann Hampton Callaway is a terrific solo act, but if you are a fan of hers, you owe it to yourself to see her kick her game up a few notches when she performs with little sister Liz.
ANN HAMPTON and LIZ CALLAWAY, Colony Hotel Royal Room, 155 Hammon Ave., Palm Beach. Through Saturday. $115-$125 for prix fixe dinner and show. $55-$65 for show only. Call: (561) 659-8100.