Broadway Star Nellie McKay Coming to KPC With Solo Show 'I Want to Live!'

NELLIE McKAY is not your usual triple threat.  The singer-songwriter and actress buoys her acrobatic ability to slip between different musical genres from jazz to rap and from disco to funk with a unique comedic flair.  McKay is an accomplished stage and screen actress who is now bringing the glowing persona for which she’s known to Kirkland.  

Born in London, McKay later lived with her actress mother in Harlem, rural Pennsylvania, and our own Olympia, Washington.  She debuted on Broadway in the 2006 production of “The Threepenny Opera” and played Hilary Swank’s sister in “P.S. I Love you.” 

Her 2004 debut album “Get Away from Me” – a clever play on Norah Jones’ popular “Come Away with Me” – was called “a tour de force from a sly, articulate musician who sounds comfortable in any era” by The New York Times, and her subsequent four albums – most recently “Home Sweet Mobile Home” (2010) – have enjoyed parallel success. 

McKay’s new solo show, called “I Want to Live!” – which is touring nationally and is coming March 3 to the Kirkland Performance Center – is a musical rendition of the 1958 film classic with the same title. 

In the movie, which will be shown at KPC on Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. during its “Free Movie Monday,” Susan Hayward portrays the morally vapid Barbara Graham (for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress) in the fictionalized story of Graham’s murder conviction and subsequent execution.  (Graham was California’s third woman executed in the gas chamber.) 

The movie gives rise to an interesting bit of music trivia as well.  The movie generated not one, but two soundtracks.  One of which, composed by Johnny Mandel, earned a Grammy nomination, and was credited by Billboard as one of the best jazz-inspired soundtracks of the time.  The film’s soundtrack was so well done in fact, it supposedly inspired the signing of Duke Ellington to create the score for the 1959 movie “Anatomy of a Murder,” which is about the jazz musician Red Nichols. 

McKay’s live musical version of the movie capitalizes on its score while also embodying Barbara Graham’s emotional tragedy with pure reverence.  Hilton Als, The New Yorker’s theater critic, promised in his November review of the show that audiences will love McKay’s rendition of “I’m So Tired” – with the powerful lyrics “I’d give you everything I’ve got for a little piece of mind” – sung stone-faced to the music of her ukulele.

One hopes to see more of McKay.  She constitutes a rare performer with the speckled ability for funny, emotional, and musical storytelling that is sorely lacking in many of our alternative, and frankly utterly failing, media channels.

More information about KPC’s free movie screening and to learn more about Nellie McKay visit the following website: http://www.kpcenter.org/performances/i-want-to-live-movie-monday.

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Trent Latta is an attorney and current member of Kirkland’s Cultural Council.  He may be reached at TrentLatta@gmail.com.