You will Love, Linda at The Schoolhouse Theater

You will Love, Linda at The Schoolhouse Theater: We had the pleasure of aisle seats to see Love, Linda: The Life of Mrs. Cole Porter at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls this weekend. This one-woman musical created by acclaimed jazz singer and cabaret performer Stevie Holland tells the story of Linda Lee Thomas, the Southern beauty and driving force behind the legendary songwriter Cole Porter.

Though Porter was gay, their marriage lasted 35 years. In Holland’s telling of Linda’s life with Porter, she was his rock, his beard, his artistic muse, the family gardener, keeper of their busy and glamorous social calendar, and at times his part-time lover. The musical, which weaves countless Porter songs throughout Ms. Holland’s narrative, follows their lives from his early days in post-WWI Paris through their move to New York where he became the toast of Broadway with hit musicals such as DuBarry Was a Lady, Anything Goes and Silk Stockings.

Giving new meaning to “Anything Goes”

Their marriage hit the rocks after the Stock Market Crash in 1929 when they moved to Hollywood and he wrote for the silver screen. As Ms. Holland tells it, Linda eschewed the “tanned Adonis’s that gathered around [their] pool” and where Porter’s carousing lost the “discrete” style he had maintained in New York. Porter’s score for the movie The Battle of Paris was poorly reviewed and the movie was not a hit. But he was back on top on Broadway by 1934 with his smash hit Anything Goes, starring Ethel Merman and memorable songs “I Get A Kick Out of You”, “You’re the Top” and “All Through the Night”.

They re-united in 1937, after Porter suffered a crippling accident on a horse that left him in pain for the rest of his life. Linda, suffering from emphysema, returned from her second stint in Paris to care for the great songwriter. They remained together until her death in 1954 and she was by his side when in 1948 he made a conspicuous comeback with Kiss Me, Kate, a musical Linda described as “the perfect musical”. The production won the Tony Award for Best Musical (the first Tony ever awarded in the category) and included signature Porter songs such as “Too Darn Hot”, “So in Love” and “Always True to You (in My Fashion)”.

See it before it goes to Off-Broadway

Ms. Holland’s show weaves seamlessly between narrative and song and plays like an intimate cabaret performance. Accompanied by a three-piece combo, Holland trips lightly from song to song, rarely more than two or three verses. In her performance, that features Porter songs like “Night and Day”, “I Love Paris,” “In the Still of the Night” and “Love for Sale”, Holland demonstrates the subtle styling that earned her Backstage’s Bistro Award for Outstanding Vocalist of the Year in 2004. A Westchester native, her 2008 album, Before Love Has Gone was picked as a top album in 2008 by USA Today. She has toured nationally and performed at Manhattan nightspots including Iridium Jazz Club, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Town Hall and the Merkin Concert Hall.

The thoroughly entertaining, Love, Linda, was arranged by her husband and award-winning composer, Gary William Friedman. It premiered Off-Broadway at the York Theatre in 2013 and will return to Manhattan’s Triad Theatre from October 17 through November 10. You can see her here (for just $38) October 12-14.

(The Schoolhouse Theater, 3 Owens Rd., North Salem, 914.277.8477; www.schoolhousetheater.org)