'WHO LOVES YOU, BABY' HITS OFF BROADWAY
****
WHO LOVES YOU, BABY?
A Posthumous Lounge Act
Starring Tom DiMenna as Telly Savalas
Directed by Taylor Negron
Extends at the SoHo Playhouse
January 18 - April 15, 2012
****
WHO LOVES YOU, BABY?
A Posthumous Lounge Act
Starring Tom DiMenna as Telly Savalas
Directed by Taylor Negron
Extends at the SoHo Playhouse
January 18 - April 15, 2012
****
Director Taylor Negron
It was a highlight of the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival, and for the past three months Who Loves You, Baby? has thrilled packed audiences at The Huron Club at The SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam Street). The show was originally slated to close on December 30, but due to popular demand, Tom DiMenna will resume his nightly resurrections of bald-headed sex symbol Telly Savalas three times a week beginning January 18 and carrying on through April 2012.
The show, written by New York’s own Hunter Nelson, has had everyone from hipsters to hip-replacements rolling in the aisles. Under the direction of Taylor Negron, young comic chameleon Tom DiMenna expertly channels the unmistakable chutzpah of long-dead 70’s Hollywood tough guy Telly Savalas. That’s right: The no-nonsense Greek-American actor best known as TV’s Lt. Theo Kojak has taken flesh once again -- and he sings, too! Accompanied by virtuosic pianist Alex Leonard, and joined by Henry Kaiser as Telly’s second-banana brother George (part of a “package deal” resurrection), DiMenna creates a unique and surreal atmosphere of nightclub comedy and supernatural stagecraft, all couched in the uncontestable class and cool of a sexier (and somewhat sweatier) time gone by.
Who Loves You, Baby? turns the conventions of traditional cabaret to its own purposes, diagnosing and – before your very eyes – curing this generation’s all-around cultural incontinence, forcibly remedying our modern world’s ever-weakening grasp on romance and masculine sexual identity. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Who Loves You, Baby? has received cheers from all over: “You will not see a funnier play than Who Loves You, Baby?! As Savalas, Tom DiMenna is hilarious and cool like Telly.” -- Nytheater.com; “Who Loves You, Baby? is hilarious. Tom DiMenna is front and center as a dead ringer for the now-dead Savalas. It’s a brilliantly breezily bombastic performance that induces giggles galore for its gumption and straight-faced pontification.” -- Nitelife Exchange; “I laughed my way from the beginning right through the end.” -- LA Fringe Review; “Tom DiMenna plays the hairless icon with comedic grace… [the show is] simultaneously ridiculous and refreshing.” -- LA Theatre Review
Audiences have been brought to tears by the string of genuine laughs that DiMenna serves up with such fresh and unexpected timing. And yet beneath the surface of Who Loves You, Baby? Tom as Telly subversively grapples with darker aspects of the human condition: mortality, legacy, love, life, and death. “A man should know his own personal darkness,” he warns. “That’s where the art lives. It’s where Beethoven’s 5th comes from. It’s where Guernica comes from. And you bet your ass it’s where ‘Kojak’ comes from!” The show serves as a touching and funny tribute to the life and songs of Savalas, while delivering an earnest message to today’s hipsters not to sacrifice romance for cheap and easy thrills. And to powder their feet.
Come witness this uproarious and fundamentally indescribable lounge act from the world beyond, and see for yourself why the world needs Telly now more than ever!
UPDATED LISTINGS INFORMATION
WHO LOVES YOU, BABY?
Written by Hunter Nelson; Directed by Taylor Negron
Starring Tom DiMenna as Telly Savalas; Henry Kaiser as George Savalas
Piano accompaniment by Alex Leonard
January 18 – April 15, 2012
New Performance Schedule: Wednesday – Friday at 7:30PM
Running Time is 75 Minutes
The Huron Club at The SoHo Playhouse is located at 15 Vandam Street
Tickets are $25. For tickets and information please visit www.sohoplayhouse.com.
For information about Who Loves You, Baby?, please visit: www.tellysavalaslive.com.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM AND CAST
TOM DIMENNA (Telly Savalas) is an alumnus of Second City Chicago, and trained in Shakespeare at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Tom recently starred in the movie Turkey Bowl which was well received at SXSW and bought by Tribeca/ESPN. A Filmstage reviewer said of Tom’s role in the movie, “The standout is Tom DiMenna… His laid back nature gives him great comedic timing and everything he says is funny. He also gets the best laugh in the film, when he decides it’s half-time by lighting up a cigarette.”
Tom came up with the idea for Who Loves You, Baby? with writer Hunter Nelson in New York as performing members of the improv comedy troupe SMIRK. After seeing a YouTube video of Telly Savalas’ #1 radio hit (in Europe), singing/speaking a casually sincere rendition of the song “If,” Tom found himself growing ever more and more obsessed with the guy. With Hunter, and later in Los Angeles with Taylor Negron, Tom developed the show as a lounge act, which quickly grew to become the must-see act of LA’s burgeoning underground cabaret scene. Several video shorts have since been produced, including “Telly Tips” and “Telly Time,” the latter of which has been featured on the popular comedy website FUNNY OR DIE.
TAYLOR NEGRON (Director) is a veteran character actor, writer, and celebrated comedian and performance artist. He made his film debut in 1982 as a love-struck, pill-popping, dancing intern in Young Doctors in Love, and as the forever memorable Mr. Pizza Guy who delivers Sean Penn a pizza in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He has starred in his own HBO special and made appearances on the Tonight Show. Taylor achieved critical acclaim in 2008 for a live show he wrote and performed which debuted in the Green Room at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Taylor Negron – A Fusion of Story and Song. Directed by opera director David Schweitzer, Unbearable Lightness, also ran in the 2009 Best of New York Solo Festival at the SoHo Playhouse and at the Barrow Street Theater.
HUNTER NELSON (Writer) is a writer, performer, and illustrator who can be seen at the UCB Theater and stages all over New York City. He's a longtime member of the comedy troupe SMIRK, and the creator of many mind-altering, perspective-obliterating comics that appear in the pages of Overflow Magazine and elsewhere. His mysterious short film ERAMOS UN MODELO consists entirely of short scenes filmed surreptitiously in the deserts of Mexico just weeks before it got way too dangerous. Who Loves You, Baby? is his second play.
HENRY KAISER (George Savalas) is a writer/actor/singer/comedian in New York City. He has been studying at the UCB since January, 2005. He has performed in the 3 on 3 semifinals with 3D beard (Joe Randazzo & Chris Ryan). He was a host for CNNSportsIllustrated.com's SI: Remix. And for the past few years he has been improvising a ton with Face (Jazz, Improv, Comedy), which was part of the NYC Fringe Festival in 2008. He has performed at the House of Blues in Boston and the Palace at Auburn Hills in Michigan. In his younger years he worked summers as a venue manager and general-helpful-dude at the Just for Laughs Festival up in Montreal, Canada (coincidentally his birthplace)!
ALEX LEONARD (Piano Accompanist) Featured in venues from Manhattan to Europe and Japan, two time MAC Award nominee Alex Leonard performs a repertoire of improvised music and great American standards.
TELLY SAVALAS (Actor, Recording Artist) was an American film and television actor and singer, whose career spanned four decades. Best known for playing the title role in the 1970’s crime drama Kojak, Savalas was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). His other movie credits include The Young Savages (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Scalphunters (1968), supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), Inside Out (1975) and Escape to Athena (1979).
ABOUT THE HURON CLUB AT THE SOHO PLAYHOUSE
Under the new management of Darren Lee Cole and Faith Mulvihill, the newly renovated SoHo Playhouse continues to serve the downtown theater community as an historic 199-seat Off Broadway venue. The Huron Club below is an intimate 55-seat cabaret and bar steeped in the history of Old New York.
The show, written by New York’s own Hunter Nelson, has had everyone from hipsters to hip-replacements rolling in the aisles. Under the direction of Taylor Negron, young comic chameleon Tom DiMenna expertly channels the unmistakable chutzpah of long-dead 70’s Hollywood tough guy Telly Savalas. That’s right: The no-nonsense Greek-American actor best known as TV’s Lt. Theo Kojak has taken flesh once again -- and he sings, too! Accompanied by virtuosic pianist Alex Leonard, and joined by Henry Kaiser as Telly’s second-banana brother George (part of a “package deal” resurrection), DiMenna creates a unique and surreal atmosphere of nightclub comedy and supernatural stagecraft, all couched in the uncontestable class and cool of a sexier (and somewhat sweatier) time gone by.
Who Loves You, Baby? turns the conventions of traditional cabaret to its own purposes, diagnosing and – before your very eyes – curing this generation’s all-around cultural incontinence, forcibly remedying our modern world’s ever-weakening grasp on romance and masculine sexual identity. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Who Loves You, Baby? has received cheers from all over: “You will not see a funnier play than Who Loves You, Baby?! As Savalas, Tom DiMenna is hilarious and cool like Telly.” -- Nytheater.com; “Who Loves You, Baby? is hilarious. Tom DiMenna is front and center as a dead ringer for the now-dead Savalas. It’s a brilliantly breezily bombastic performance that induces giggles galore for its gumption and straight-faced pontification.” -- Nitelife Exchange; “I laughed my way from the beginning right through the end.” -- LA Fringe Review; “Tom DiMenna plays the hairless icon with comedic grace… [the show is] simultaneously ridiculous and refreshing.” -- LA Theatre Review
Audiences have been brought to tears by the string of genuine laughs that DiMenna serves up with such fresh and unexpected timing. And yet beneath the surface of Who Loves You, Baby? Tom as Telly subversively grapples with darker aspects of the human condition: mortality, legacy, love, life, and death. “A man should know his own personal darkness,” he warns. “That’s where the art lives. It’s where Beethoven’s 5th comes from. It’s where Guernica comes from. And you bet your ass it’s where ‘Kojak’ comes from!” The show serves as a touching and funny tribute to the life and songs of Savalas, while delivering an earnest message to today’s hipsters not to sacrifice romance for cheap and easy thrills. And to powder their feet.
Come witness this uproarious and fundamentally indescribable lounge act from the world beyond, and see for yourself why the world needs Telly now more than ever!
UPDATED LISTINGS INFORMATION
WHO LOVES YOU, BABY?
Written by Hunter Nelson; Directed by Taylor Negron
Starring Tom DiMenna as Telly Savalas; Henry Kaiser as George Savalas
Piano accompaniment by Alex Leonard
January 18 – April 15, 2012
New Performance Schedule: Wednesday – Friday at 7:30PM
Running Time is 75 Minutes
The Huron Club at The SoHo Playhouse is located at 15 Vandam Street
Tickets are $25. For tickets and information please visit www.sohoplayhouse.com.
For information about Who Loves You, Baby?, please visit: www.tellysavalaslive.com.
ABOUT THE CREATIVE TEAM AND CAST
TOM DIMENNA (Telly Savalas) is an alumnus of Second City Chicago, and trained in Shakespeare at London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Tom recently starred in the movie Turkey Bowl which was well received at SXSW and bought by Tribeca/ESPN. A Filmstage reviewer said of Tom’s role in the movie, “The standout is Tom DiMenna… His laid back nature gives him great comedic timing and everything he says is funny. He also gets the best laugh in the film, when he decides it’s half-time by lighting up a cigarette.”
Tom came up with the idea for Who Loves You, Baby? with writer Hunter Nelson in New York as performing members of the improv comedy troupe SMIRK. After seeing a YouTube video of Telly Savalas’ #1 radio hit (in Europe), singing/speaking a casually sincere rendition of the song “If,” Tom found himself growing ever more and more obsessed with the guy. With Hunter, and later in Los Angeles with Taylor Negron, Tom developed the show as a lounge act, which quickly grew to become the must-see act of LA’s burgeoning underground cabaret scene. Several video shorts have since been produced, including “Telly Tips” and “Telly Time,” the latter of which has been featured on the popular comedy website FUNNY OR DIE.
TAYLOR NEGRON (Director) is a veteran character actor, writer, and celebrated comedian and performance artist. He made his film debut in 1982 as a love-struck, pill-popping, dancing intern in Young Doctors in Love, and as the forever memorable Mr. Pizza Guy who delivers Sean Penn a pizza in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He has starred in his own HBO special and made appearances on the Tonight Show. Taylor achieved critical acclaim in 2008 for a live show he wrote and performed which debuted in the Green Room at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, The Unbearable Lightness of Being Taylor Negron – A Fusion of Story and Song. Directed by opera director David Schweitzer, Unbearable Lightness, also ran in the 2009 Best of New York Solo Festival at the SoHo Playhouse and at the Barrow Street Theater.
HUNTER NELSON (Writer) is a writer, performer, and illustrator who can be seen at the UCB Theater and stages all over New York City. He's a longtime member of the comedy troupe SMIRK, and the creator of many mind-altering, perspective-obliterating comics that appear in the pages of Overflow Magazine and elsewhere. His mysterious short film ERAMOS UN MODELO consists entirely of short scenes filmed surreptitiously in the deserts of Mexico just weeks before it got way too dangerous. Who Loves You, Baby? is his second play.
HENRY KAISER (George Savalas) is a writer/actor/singer/comedian in New York City. He has been studying at the UCB since January, 2005. He has performed in the 3 on 3 semifinals with 3D beard (Joe Randazzo & Chris Ryan). He was a host for CNNSportsIllustrated.com's SI: Remix. And for the past few years he has been improvising a ton with Face (Jazz, Improv, Comedy), which was part of the NYC Fringe Festival in 2008. He has performed at the House of Blues in Boston and the Palace at Auburn Hills in Michigan. In his younger years he worked summers as a venue manager and general-helpful-dude at the Just for Laughs Festival up in Montreal, Canada (coincidentally his birthplace)!
ALEX LEONARD (Piano Accompanist) Featured in venues from Manhattan to Europe and Japan, two time MAC Award nominee Alex Leonard performs a repertoire of improvised music and great American standards.
TELLY SAVALAS (Actor, Recording Artist) was an American film and television actor and singer, whose career spanned four decades. Best known for playing the title role in the 1970’s crime drama Kojak, Savalas was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Birdman of Alcatraz (1962). His other movie credits include The Young Savages (1961), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), Battle of the Bulge (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), The Scalphunters (1968), supervillain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Pretty Maids All in a Row (1971), Inside Out (1975) and Escape to Athena (1979).
ABOUT THE HURON CLUB AT THE SOHO PLAYHOUSE
Under the new management of Darren Lee Cole and Faith Mulvihill, the newly renovated SoHo Playhouse continues to serve the downtown theater community as an historic 199-seat Off Broadway venue. The Huron Club below is an intimate 55-seat cabaret and bar steeped in the history of Old New York.
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