the POPPY! reviews are coming in and our little show is a little darling! read on!
nytheatre.com
Poppy!
Reviewed by Richard Hinojosa
Aug 24, 2009
"It has been a long road for Poppy Bulova. She launched her career as Baby Pops, performing for royalty while still in diapers, and that led her to her first bout with alcoholism and amphetamine addiction as a toddler and a first nervous breakdown in elementary school. Since then she has toured the world performing her cabaret act and occasionally stripping. Her albums have swept the Grammies, her films the Oscars, and her musicals the Tonys—she is the biggest star you've never heard of and she is absolutely hilarious.
The show is pretty straightforward: just a pretentious international cabaret star and her piano player singing mostly silly songs with the deepest conviction. In between songs Poppy talks to us, the wretched masses, filling us in on her life story. Fagen Beauregard tickles the ivories while sipping from a tall glass of "ice water."
Lillie Jayne (Poppy) writes and directs this quirky comedy. She also writes the songs. Michael O'Dell (Beauregard) arranges all the music. He is a fantastic accompanist and they work together like a tight unit.
Jayne is extraordinarily magnetic. She speaks in an outrageous accent that is a bizarre mix of mostly Russian with some French, German, and Long Island thrown in there. Her martini glass never seems to empty, however, she was not allowed to smoke, otherwise I'm sure she would have chain smoked throughout the show. One may think that all the smoking would affect her voice but it hasn't. Her voice is silky smooth. Her songs range from funny and sentimental to funny and jazzy. I especially liked the numbers, "I Don't Drink," "F***," "Gypsy Girl Galore," and "Throw in the Towel." But she sings over a dozen songs so there are plenty of other songs to enjoy.
Jayne's story of Poppy is very funny and her comic timing is dead on. Her outfit is low-cut and sparkly. Half way through the performance she takes some of it off "to keep us interested." That certainly adds to her magnetism. The stage is bare except for a microphone and piano and that's all she needs. Still, I kept expecting Jayne to directly address an audience member and spin off of their comments in her wild character, but she never does. She sticks to her script.
I had a really fun time at this show. Poppy! is non-stop entertainment. She has enough charm and charisma to stand out in a festival as big as FringeNYC. Check her out before she jets off to some far off place"
Producer: Snake In The Boot Author: Lillie Jayne Director: Lillie Jayne
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new york time out
Poppy!
**** [FOUR STARS] "Throughout this show, the hilarious, egomaniacal star Poppy Bulova—played by her creator and the show’s writer, director and songwriter, Lillie Jayne—frequently reminds the audience just how lucky they are to be seeing an actress of such incredible talent and intrigue. And boy, is she right: This charming evening of cabaret entertains from start to finish. The songs, which cover such topics as the futility of life and the best reason to drink (“to get dwunk”), are risqué and rib tickling—as are Poppy’s lead-ins to them. With a martini in hand, she lets the audience in on her fabled childhood and career by offering deadpan deliveries of ridiculous monologues. The best part may be her accent—an unidentifiable mix of Russian, French and plain old speech impediment. Her country of origin is revealed eventually, and it’s a killer punch line, so we won’t ruin the surprise: You’ll have to experience the incomparable Poppy yourself if you want to find out." — Julia Israel, TONY Kids associate editor
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New Theatre Corps Blogspot
Reviewed by Ryan Max
Poppy Bulova, a lighthearted parody of a hardscrabble, down-and-out lounge singer, uses her hauteur and strange life story to charm her audience into the adoring fans she firmly believes she deserves.
Poppy
Ms. Poppy Bulova—a performer of incredible talent, fame, and self-regard—would not have liked the scene just outside of her recent performance. As happens with the venue-sharing turf, a large crowd of theatergoers was huddled in the lobby, waiting for another show. When the lobby had emptied, only a handful of people remained to see Poppy!: An Enchanted Evening with Poppy Bulova. How could they possibly be so near and still resist the powerful allure of Ms. Bulova? As she makes very clear, she is “much more interesting” than just about anyone else.
The lucky few that remain fill the small tables around her stage, and the intimate, lounge-y atmosphere is all the better for it. For Poppy, any sort of captive audience will do. The fairly bare space (a microphone, a piano, and its player) makes sure that when Poppy enters wrapped in a bright Asian gown, all eyes are on her. After some cursory introductions, she launches into a beguiling hour of stories and songs that detail her very strange life. Her ambiguously accented English (think Paris by way of the Ukraine) has a sweet, disarming quality, so much so that you hardly mind when you are lumped in with “all of the small people…who don’t really matter,” as Poppy so gently puts it.
Lillie Jayne—who, in addition to playing Poppy, also wrote, directed, and produced the show—keeps things lighthearted, even when detailing Poppy’s oddly tragic life (“toddler alcoholism and amphetamine addiction”). She also saves Poppy from being a character of Mel Brooksian (that’s a thing, right?) hyperbole. The engaging interludes between songs—in which Poppy explains her experience of puberty (“I make tits”), the origin of her exotic accent (“an island out in the Atlantic Ocean…Long Island”), and her eventual rise to superstardom in films that don’t exist—blend very organically into the show. Songs may be inspired directly by, say, her proclivity to alcoholism (“I drink to get drunk”) or spring from more obscure sources. Basically, whatever Poppy feels like singing about. And throughout them all, it is the clear disconnect between her view and the reality of her situation that makes the show so ceaselessly charming.
The songs that form the backbone of Poppy’s story—tapped out on the piano by her one time lover Fagen Beauregard (a mostly silent Michael O’Dell, who also arranged the music)—consist of simple, catchy melodies. But while the music may be simple and Poppy may be a parody, Ms. Jayne’s voice is legitimately gorgeous. She can alternate from a strong warble on the more rambunctious songs, to an intense Bjork-like whisper on the unexpectedly poignant “Black-Eyed Soldier.”
Toward the end of An Evening with Poppy Bulova, Poppy describes one of her many encounters with obscure (yet impressive, she assures us) Hollywood figures. He tells Poppy that one of her recent shows was awful because it “didn’t seem regretless.” And he is dead on about what makes Poppy so easy to enjoy: it is freeing to surrender your time to someone so sublimely confident and convinced of their own fame and glamour, regardless of whether they deserve to be. She is the beginning and end of the show’s strengths, weaknesses, charm and appeal, and that is why this review will end right where it began: with Ms. Poppy Bulova.
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