“Everyday Rapture”: Brief Review
“Everyday Rapture,” the autobiographical show-with-music that Sherrie Rene Scott (pictured) cowrote (with the skilled and witty Dick Scanlan) and is performing at Second Stage in New York, deserves its fine reviews. Scott tells the story of her religious childhood in Kansas, where she early yearned for show-biz fame. A section where she compares her love for Jesus with her love for Judy Garland manages to be both an near-academic mini-course in Christ iconography and a send-up of all idolatry. The other standout section also limns fanaticism: Scott responds to a boy who has posted a video of himself on YouTube lyp-synching to her voice. Watching Scott in her big Broadway shows — “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” “Aida” — I have enjoyed her yet always felt some quality fundamental to high-wattage divadom to be missing. (No one is more aware, and self-deprecating, about her “second-lead” status than Scott herself.) Nothing fundamental is missing in “Everyday Rapture.” Highly recommended.
