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In a town where the consistent sellouts are costly, elaborate extravaganzas, it's a tribute to Danny Gans's charisma and appeal that his one-man variety act can draw the same crowds with nothing more than a backup band and a few props. Gans is "the man of many voices" -- more than 400 of them -- and his show features impressions of 80 different celebrities, usually a different mix each night depending on audience demographics.
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The emphasis is on musical impressions (everyone from Sinatra to Springsteen), with some movie scenes (Hepburn and Fonda from On Golden Pond, Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump) thrown in. A standout (though he doesn't always do it) is "The Twelve Months of Christmas" sung by 12 different celebrities (Paul Lynde, Clint Eastwood, Woody Allen, and so on). Gans's vocal flexibility is impressive, though his impersonations are hit-or-miss (his Springsteen needs work). That said, when we last saw him, he did a dead-on impression of comedian Jeff Foxworthy that had the crowd rolling, a hilarious bit involving George Burns imitating MC Hammer, and a somewhat freaky, but totally on-target impression of Macy Gray. Truth be told, he's better than his current material (particularly if the mood strikes and he improvises), which is padded with obvious jokes and mawkish sentimentality. Still, he's a consistent crowd-pleaser, and the lack of bombast can be a refreshing change of pace.
The current president is still missing from Gans' repertoire, though I think Father Bush made an appearance. It could have been Bob Hope though, as it was not one of Gans' most accurate voices. The only other voice I didn't hear last time was that of Jeff Foxworthy, which allowed Gans to incorporate a huge chunk of the comedian's "You might be a redneck ..." routine, which is still as funny as it was in 1993.
He does mention Nelly, but only as part of a George Burns bit. And he has updated his Michael Jackson spoof to incorporate the child-dangling balcony episode. But for the most part, Gans must count himself lucky that Anthony Hopkins did a third Hannibal Lecter movie, or that Hootie & the Blowfish is rallying a comeback and playing the Stratosphere this weekend.
At the same time, I'll readily concede that what Gans offers instead is a form of perfection. An act so carefully crafted and polished that at some point it was declared too perfect to tinker with anymore. They didn't just come overnight, those masterful pendulum swings of the opening minutes: The falsetto Smokey Robinson that shifts to the gruff bark of Joe Cocker, then back to the silky Temptations before downshifting again to James Brown and Ray Charles.
It's an act that at one point sought subjects who hadn't been imitated before, such as Al Jarreau and Aaron Neville. And one that mixed comedy, of a fashion -- Garth Brooks singing "I Lost Weight in Low Places" -- with irony-free, drama-class rendition of the climactic Al Pacino speech in "Scent of a Woman."
