Broadway at the Beach opened its seventh season at the Ice Palace on June 4, with singer Brandon Cutrell returning as its host, but with Joshua Stephen Kartes at the piano for all but the final night, when Ray Fellman will play.  One of the summer’s most enjoyable events, this opening night edition featured singers from Broadway shows, “American Idol,” Stonewall Sensation, and locals taking advantage of the open mic.  DJ Chuck McTague was responsible for lights and sound.
Brandon kicked off the evening by recounting a romantic drama, honky-tonk style (“I see what I wanna see, I know what I wanna know”).  Pianist Joshua showed off his versatility by singing and playing “Rocket Man,” with a wide-ranging a cappella cadenza at the end, and playing a Broadway improv medley, made up of musicals “Into the Woods,” “Wicked,” “Annie,” “Sweeney Todd,” “The King and I,” “The Wiz,” and “Fame,” which were chosen by the audience, and songs, including “Tomorrow,” “Getting to Know You,” “No-one Is Alone,” “Popular,” “Ease on Down the Road,” “Hard-Knock Life,” and “Home,” which just went whizzing by.
One of Brandon’s guests, Michael Buchanan (“Book of Mormon,” “The Addams Family”) responded with his own demented, rapid-fire name-that-tune medley, made up of bits of the likes of “Hello, Dolly,” “If I Loved You,” “I’m Shy,” “I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No,” “I’ve Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night,” “I’m Called Little Buttercup,” “Why God?,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Suddenly Seymour,” “Poor Wand’ring One” in soprano, “Memory,” “T-t-touch me,” “Music of the Night,” “Think of Me” with cadenza, and “Send in the Clowns.”  He also took a breezy look at madness in “Screw Loose,” from “Crybaby.”
The headliner was Eric Michael Crop (“Godspell”), who sang, very dramatically, Jesus’ Gethsemane monologue, “I Only Have to Know” (“I’d have to know, my Lord: why should I die?”), from Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” with a ringing head tone high note near the conclusion.  Among Creighton Fraker’s (“American Idol”) offerings was a simple and sincere “What a Wonderful World.”  Recent Stonewall Sensation winner Margaret Kelly, from Scotland, sang several cathartic numbers, including “The Power of Love,” as well as a rousing “I Will Survive.”  Kenny Holcomb sang “Big, Blonde, and Beautiful,” from “Hairspray,” as “Big, Bald, and Beautiful,” and emoted freely in “Cry Me a River” and “Don’t Cry out Loud.”
From the open-mic list came Eric (“The Producers”), who lent a beautiful high lyric tenor to “You Can Never Go Back to Before,” from “Ragtime,” and this writer and baritone, singing “This Nearly Was Mine,” from “South Pacific.”