“RIVETING PSYCHOLOGICAL THEATER” – TAMMY FAYE STARLITE’S NICO UNDERGROUND RETURNS TO JOE’S PUB 7/24 TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW
”Tammy Faye’s performance is incredible. Her portrayal of Nico uncannily continues to deepen. It started out years ago as something like smart musical comedy, but has now transformed into riveting psychological theater. Her band is superb, and her interpretations of Nico’s songs are transporting. The entire show is unsettling and gripping and stands as much more than a tribute to a significant cultural figure. Really, while never breaking character, it succeeds entirely on its own compelling terms.”– Anthony DeCurtis, author of Lou Reed: A Life.
“It was my honor to initiate Nico’s signing to Elektra for her glorious Marble Index album; as well, we were close friends. What a thrill to hear Tammy performing Nico’s beautiful music (and bringing to it Nico’s perplexing and enchanting persona as well)–one superb artist doing full justice to the art of another. Tammy was so great, Nico was so great, the songs and the singing and playing of them were ALL so great. Had I a fixed number of stars to bestow, I’d insist ongoing more than the most allowed.” — Danny Fields
“It seems to me quite impossible to write about seeing Tammy Faye as Nico tonight at Joe’s Pub. Bill Hickey used to talk about truly great performances being ‘seamless,’ unable to tell where the artist and character begin and end. It was that. But more. I was so struck by her voice. I’ve never heard Tammy sing like this. And because she slipped into Nico as if she were made of mercury, I wonder if that voice was a manifestation of that seamless state of being. I think Nico would want to sound like Tammy did tonight. I’m generally grumpy watching anything. Even performances that are good or great. Not tonight. I would have happily stayed there until 6 in the morning watching her. My heart was somewhere far away from 2023 and all that’s terrible. My heart was restored. What Tammy does: this study of humanity, this study of art, of music, of time—is a superhuman act. I am fucking LUCKY to have been there tonight. Her Nico will live in me.” – Elizabeth Grey, essayist who has written for NBC News, Huffington Post, GEN, The Startup, etc.
“Tammy Faye Starlite captures Nico — the woman, the singer, the loopy icon — in a unique blend of tribute and parody. The show, formatted as a radio interview teetering on the verge of disaster, combines informative musical history, uncanny musical re-creation and erudite comedy. There’s nothing like it.” – Ira Robbins/Trouser Press Books.
Tammy Faye Starlite is bringing her much lauded NICO: UNDERGROUND, directed by Michael Schiralli, back to Joe’s Pub on July 24. The previous performance there earlier this spring sold out weeks in advance and generated the kudos seen above.
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The performance has been staged in Los Angeles, Palm Springs, Provincetown and, under the auspices of The Andy Warhol Foundation, in Pittsburgh. It debuted at New York’s Theater For the New City, where its four-week run was a sell-out. New York Times drama critic Charles Isherwood raved, “I began to feel I had somehow been transported back to the late 1960s, when Nico was in her mythic prime. Superb though Ms. Starlite’s renderings of Nico’s distinctive vocalizing is, I have to confess I was just as engaged by her dead-pan presentation of her rambling responses to her interviewer’s questions.”
Nico: Underground finds Tammy Faye Starlite inhabiting the Warhol superstar and Velvet Underground centerpiece who was born Christa Päffgen in pre-war Cologne. Starlite spent the better part of five years developing the original script that draws from videos, interviews, biographies and rare recordings, as well as first person interviews with those who personally knew the Teutonic chanteuse. This seriocomic portrayal is a masterful characterization that includes performances of songs by Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Jackson Browne, David Bowie, Rogers and Hart, Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, as well as Nico’s own compositions. The show’s veteran backing band includes Keith Hartel (acoustic guitar), Richard Feridun (electric guitar), Ron Miracle Metz (drums) Dave Nagler (keyboard), Ester Balint (violin) and Craig Hoek (sax, flute). Tammy Faye is joined onstage by Jeff Ward as The Interviewer; the two recreate actual encounters Nico had with journalists, based on the text by T. D. Lang. Nico: Underground offers a combination of musical authenticity and masterful characterization that serves as a compelling, often humorous commentary on Nico’s life and times.