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by ANTHONY STOECKERT
The Princeton Packet –
June 19, 2012
EVANGELIA Kingsley is one mother of a mother.
As Queen Aggravain in The Princeton Festival’s delightful staging of Once
Upon a Mattress, Kingsley offers a master class on comic performance. From her exaggerated proper voice to contorting her
face into seemingly impossible positions as she expresses emotions from shock, evil enthusiasm and a thirst for power, Kingsley
is a marvel.
. . .
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Places to Live:
Traveling Music for the Restless
Metropolitan Room
Sandi Durell, Cabaret Scenes
October
14, 2008
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The Metropolitan Room was buzzing with
friends, professional theater associates and near full capacity as Evangelia Kingsley entered “Traveling the World.”
She is an experienced operatic soprano (with lots of dramatic coloratura), possessing honed acting skills, who is having great
fun in the cabaret world when given the opportunity! Seen as “Signora Naccarelli’ in the First National Tour of
Light in the Piazza as well as in the Choir in
Broadway’s Coram Boy, Evangelia is an exhilarating
addition to cabaret.
What separates this soprano from the few others who make
their way into cabaret, is her sense of humor and tongue-in-cheek sensibility. Having lived and studied in Paris,
Italy and being of Greek descent, Evangelia uses all of her experiences to embark on a musical world-wide adventure. Of course,
“A Foggy Day” in rich legit soprano does stretch the imagination. However, “How Are Things in Glocca Morra”
entwined with “Loch Lomond” is beautiful music to the ears.
The arrangements are clever, segregating the Parisians
in one place (“The Poor People of Paris,” “C’est si bon”) and the romantically emotional “Lush
Life” and “Hotel.” Not far away on the “Isle of Capri” the humorous Mrs. Wentworth Brewster
is lurking at “A Bar on the Piccola Marina.” Evangelia, a native New Yorker, presents all this with great
aplomb as we’re brought to laughter over and over again.
“Jerusalem Gold,” sung in Hebrew and English
in memory of Amos Ben-Gurion, along with “The Bells Will Toll,” are serious and reflective moments. Ms. Kingsley
“(I) Happen(s) to Like New York” and is in one of the best drunken stupors imaginable as “Radical Sally,”
hardly able to lift her head off the piano, as she high kicks her way thru “I’ll Take New York.”
Attention is paid to current socio-political affairs with
“This Land Is Your Land,” “The House I Live In,” “Take Care of This House” and “American
Tune.” Menken/Ashman’s “Somewhere That’s Green” gets some extra color added with special
lyrics and heightened awareness as an ode to au natural, raw veggies and solar panels.
Accompanist Chip Prince, bedecked in kilts, is a fine musician
adding his own touch of levity. The show is directed by Eliza Beckwith. Perhaps next time, Evangelia will add some additional
dates.
www.cabaretscenes.org |
Alarm Will Sound alerts listeners to Adams's hits
Richard Dyer, Boston Globe
December 5, 2005
The most effective of the soloists was the impassioned mezzo Evangelia
Kingsley as Consuelo, the undocumented immigrant from El Salvador.
"Todd" makes the cut
The
Star-Ledger, Peter Filichia
July 6, 2005
. . . Evangelia Kingsley is a riveting Beggar Woman . . .
Twisted: A Tribute
to Lunacy
by Barbara Leavy
cabaretscenes.com
August 12, 2004
If you want to see a cabaret show
that is unusual, funny, and frequently emotionally powerful, catch Twisted: A Tribute to Lunacy at Danny's Skylight
Room. Conceived by singer and actress Evangelia Kingsley and her music director and accompanist, Chip Prince, the show portrays
individual and global madness, with such familiar songs such as Jacques Brel's (in translation) Crazy Carousels, which
newly married Evangelia thinks is an impression of the first year of wedlock, plus Stephen Sondheim's Losing My Mind,
and Kurt Weill's The Saga of Jenny, as well as less familiar numbers such as the stunning Reeperbahn (red-light
district) from Alice.
Evangelia possesses a highly trained, operatic soprano, and body language
that reflects three years of study for a Master of Fine Arts. Tall, with striking Mediterranean looks (she is proudly Greek),
she skillfully dramatizes both with her voice and also with her facial expressions the intensity of aberrant states of mind,
always stopping before such intensity crosses the line into parody. She can easily be imagined as playing Medea. She is also
a madcap performer, and since madness sometimes has to do with the ludicrous, Evangelia proves an adept, even slapstick comedian.
Her ironic wit can be found in such throwaway lines as explaining that Gretchen, the seduced and abandoned young girl betrayed
by Goethe's Faust, sat at her spinning wheel and "unraveled."
It is perhaps a quibble to argue that the show's weakness is that the theme
of insanity is perhaps too diffuse. Much of what Evangelia deems lunacy is what the existentialist philosophers call absurdity,
a total lack of meaning in a world that can then be seen as crazy. Kurt Weill's 1920s song about a global oil empire that
began with a single person selling seashells becomes in this show a political statement for our times. But this is a very
different kind of madness from Gretchen's descent into real insanity. And a beautiful rendition of Mary Yeston's Unusual
Way from Nine, which ended the performance (the audience demanded several encores), can only by a stretch be seen
as having to do with lunacy. On the other hand, a show devoted only to the Gretchens of this world would probably be too repetitious
and thus tedious.
BACKSTAGE, January 16, 2004
by David Finkle
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