It would be tempting to list Felicia Curry as a “Baltimore talent,” but, while she’s been part of the excellent resident company at Everyman Theatre for four years, she calls the District of Columbia home. She is well established in the Capitol region as an actress and vocalist. She also serves as host of a local arts program on WETA.
So she leans heavily D.C.
Still, because Curry is such an extravagantly gifted and engaging performer, one wishes she would move to a zip code starting with 212 so that we could call her a Baltimorean.
Of course, many of our favorite Ravens and Orioles file their tax returns from far beyond the Patapsco Drainage Basin, and we still claim them as our own. Therefore, at least while she’s on stage here, I think we get to call Felicia Curry a Baltimore talent, a player for the home team. I’ll go further and say that, in time, and with greater exposure, she could become a civic treasure.
Curry’s impressive talents as a singer are currently on display at Everyman, in a show running through July 28.
About a quarter-acre of seating in the Fayette Street theater has been uprooted to transform Everyman into a cabaret, with tables and chairs, nightclub lighting and a bar. It’s how a theater company survives, by innovating ways to keep the customers coming after the regular season, and it’s hard to imagine that any of Wednesday night’s guests left in a bad mood. After all, they were not home watching the Republican National Convention.
Curry first appeared, as if directly from her dressing room, at the rear of the theater, singing, “Don’t Rain On My Parade” in a strong, even startling, Broadway voice. She worked her way through the audience, dressed in a sparkling white outfit with sash, bare shouldered on the left, that made her appear to be emerging from a billowy cloud. Curry performed in platform sandals with stiletto heels — and twirled in them like a flamenco dancer at one point— and I believe that to be one of the greatest athletic feats I’ve ever witnessed.
Felicia Curry has what the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca called the “energetic instinct” that brings talent to its highest level. She also brings big confidence to her performance. She has real showbiz pizzazz.
A native of New Jersey and a graduate of the University of Maryland, Curry now has a load of theater credits, including a Broadway stint as The Witch in “Into the Woods.”
She’s appeared in Everyman productions in recent years and first did her cabaret show virtually, in front of cameras during the pandemic.
That was not much fun, certainly when compared with the electricity generated Wednesday night on the Everyman stage.
Sharing bits of biography with the audience, Curry mentioned her start in Baltimore theater — at Spotlighters, after college — and expressed love for a city that has produced many great artists and musicians.
With that setup, it was a little strange to hear her break into the Nina Simone-arranged, reggae-style version of “Baltimore,” Randy Newman’s dreary 1977 take on a “dyin’” city he had never visited.
Why, I wondered, did Curry select that bummer of a ballad as her second number? As odd as that seemed, it was even more bizarre to hear the dark lyrics of Newman’s urban lament suddenly turn bright and warm, changed by Curry to support her assertion of love for the city. I suppose she had no choice but to avoid Newman’s dreariest lyrics, given the festive mood she had just established with her entrance. (If she’s looking for a song that pokes fun at the city without tearing it down, Curry might want to try, “Good Morning, Baltimore” from “Hairspray.”)
But that was the only bit of awkwardness in the show. The rest was superb, every high-heeled step of the way, in large part because of the performer’s repertoire and varied singing styles.
Curry was Tina Turner (“Proud Mary”), she was Whitney Houston (“Saving All My Love for You”), she was Etta James (“At Last”).
She passed one of the great tests in voice command, articulation and emotive singing, Stephen Sondheim’s “Send In The Clowns.”
She and pianist Tina Faye pulled off a mashup of Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” and John Lennon’s “Imagine.” That arrangement, by Faye, might sound like a stretch, but the collaboration resulted in something sublime.
Deeply influenced by Simone and having portrayed her in a play, Curry honored the late singer with renditions of Simone classics, her voice ranging from melodic brilliance to throaty pathos.
She took us instantly into dark history with “Strange Fruit,” singing that Billie Holiday song about lynchings as hauntingly as I’ve ever heard it, and Curry’s a cappella “Brown Baby” was the perfect balance of melancholy and beauty; the audience listened to it in what I could only characterize as silent awe.
That’s the kind of effect performers live for and work toward, and Felicia Curry has obviously worked very hard to get there. Good for her, and good for us, and smart of Everyman to keep her in that good company, in Baltimore.