“Kate Baldwin: Let’s Not Talk About…” at 54 Below (Photo courtesy of 54 Below)
If Kate Baldwin is doing a concert anywhere near you, it’s imperative that you go. Having seen her a handful of times in a variety of venues, she always feels at home and is never anything less than spectacular. Her distinctive voice is once again on display this week in a new show called Let’s Not Talk About… at 54 Below. The title is both a riff on a Cole Porter song and a not-at-all-disguised reference to the crumbling state of our country in 2025. Or, to use Baldwin’s terminology, this pervasive “dumpster fire.”
Porter was renowned for his list songs and their dextrous wordplay. The title song is of that ilk and Baldwin has enlisted Sean Hartley to do a rewrite skewering contemporary celebrities, news events, and musicals. Hartley has an impossible task trying to ape one of the greatest lyricists of all time, but his twisty, clever rhymes and gentle ribbing of the culture are delightful.
Baldwin shows off her impressive vocal range in a mashup of U2’s “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and Celine Dion’s “Taking Chances”. The arrangement by music director Georgia Stitt smoothly connects the dissatisfaction of the first song with the determination of the second and culminates in a thrilling, exalted belt from Baldwin. Later, she brings that sound back for an interpretation of Brandi Carlile’s “The Joke” and, again, blew our eyes open with some high notes (and a riff!) that were genuinely breathtaking.
She recommends Anna Sales’ Death, Sex & Money podcast about taboo topics that we should be more comfortable discussing before landing on sex as “the most fun of the three” and the one she’s going to focus on. A delicious rendition of k.d. lang’s “Constant Craving” recalls Baldwin’s summer camp crushes on sexy boys before a shift to Mary Rodgers and Stephen Sondheim’s “The Boy From…” flips it around to reveal…they were gay. These paired songs are perfect encapsulations of what is great about Kate Baldwin. She can do deep longing and she can do broad goofiness and they are both the truest expression of those feelings.
This juxtaposition happens again when she dedicates “Days of Plenty” from Little Women to the memory of her friend and Hello, Dolly! co-star Gavin Creel and then performs a series of seven short comedic songs by Stitt. Baldwin isn’t afraid to show her heart and let some sadness in, but then she offers genuine laughs as a balm.
She winds down the set with Paul Simon’s “American Tune” and Jason Robert Brown’s “Always Better” from The Bridges of Madison County. A plaintive folk song and a huge cry for love are a fitting finale for the thesis of this show. We’re just trying to get through while the world falls down. The eighty-or-so minutes I spent with Kate Baldwin this week were a wonderful respite from everything outside and I can’t wait until I have the chance to spend eighty more.