Lucy Lawless on
Celebrity Duets

Lucy on Duets: Week Three Thursday
14 September 2006

Review by KT
 fsktl@uaf.edu

On the promo, they use Lucy singing with Kenny in an insert panel as they show the faces of some of the competitors.

Lucy is the first singer again.

Again on the behind the scenes tape, they (and Lucy) point up that Lucy might be a little intimidated. Lucy is SO goofy with the faces she makes. She mentions that she’ll be singing with a great diva and that the song she has to sing is like the hardest song in the world to sing.

Back to the hall. Lucy is walking along the front row down among the audience and starts to sing, "The moment I wake up. . ." settling in on the corner of David’s desk and giving him a little vamp, "Before I put on my make-up. . ." and I think in great surprise, "OH! IT’S. . ." and yes, as Lucy introduces her and the diva walks out on stage I say out loud to my honey, "Oh my god—it’s Dionne Warwick!" YES!

The audience is very excited. Lucy stands on the edge of the stage looking up at Dionne and then turns back around to lead the audience in applauding Dionne.

Lucy’s so humble. She’s just a delight and it’s just delightful, to see how happy she is to be able to do this.

I like Lucy’s voice in a lower register. (We find out later that David doesn’t.)

Excellent sound.

And Lucy’s right—this is a very hard song to sing. Dionne and Burt Bacharach always collaborated on songs with these very quirky rhythms—like this one and "Do You Know The Way To San Jose?" among others.

Lucy and Dionne is a GREAT match! Dionne does a little dance step as she comes across the stage to join Luce.

They look really comfortable together. And Lucy is so joyous—she gives out just a huge grin and bounces on her toes when they stop for a second for one of the pauses in this staccato song.

Oh she’s good tonight—she is soooooooo good tonight. BEST!

I think this is easily one of her best performances. It’s up there with the duet she did with Smokey, though they are very different in tone and atmosphere.

They voices blend so fine together on the final, "Youuuuuu" of the song. Dionne appeared to be charmed by Lucy and happy to be singing with her and Lucy was absolutely thrilled and delighted to be singing with Dionne. There was some way cool female bonding going on.

Dionne walks off and Wayne comes up to Lucy and squeals to her, "YOU GOT TO SING WITH DIONNE WARWICK!!!" and Lucy’s yowls out, "Wow!" (I THINK it’s "wow") back and slaps herself on the forehead. Then Wayne takes her to the (Da Da Da Dum!) Judgment spot on stage.

Who’s Kristy Swanson? They show her in the audience and insert her name on screen.

Marie says, "I think you were a little bit timid". The audience is outraged and lets out a big, "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" During the booing, they take a close up shot of a big sign being held by a fan that says, "We want a Xena movie!" Yay! Lucy sports a huge smile after the booing. Marie jokes, "They love me". Nu-huh. Lucy was not intimidated. Bullpucky. I think their rendition was very sophisticated in a very subtle way. I loved it. And so did the audience.

Marie continues with "It was kind of in your nose a little bit." And Lucy’s giving her a look like "You dumb sh*t, I just sang with Dionne Warwick—why the hell would I care what you think?"

Wayne interrupts Marie saying, "Mr. Richard?"

Little Richard says, "I love Lucy". GO GO RICHARD! Lucy gives him a beaming smile. They cut to a guy waving a sign that says, "I love Lucy".

Richard continues, "You’ve been in the coolant grrl, but you don’t even know the flavor." (Reviewing the tape, I hear that he actually said, "You’ve been in the kool-aide, grrl"—but for Little Richard, being "in the coolant" wouldn’t absolutely be not something he would say. Lucy is laughing and watching him affectionately now. He says, "You got to get out of the rhythm and get some blues girl. And it’s going to be alright for you. And hold on—‘cause I’m coming." Lucy barks out a short appreciative affirming yelp and then punctuates that with a very short Xena trill.

David says, "I actually kind of liked that. I actually kind of liked your performance." Lucy mouths out "Wow" to him. "Out of all the singers, you have been stuck with more genres than anybody else. You really have. And you’ve really held up. You’ve got to ask when you’re rehearsing though you have to ask them to let you have a higher harmony part so we can really hear you. I don’t want to hear you down low—I want to hear you where you can really sing. So tell them you want to step it up a little bit, alright?"

Shot of a "Lawless is Flawless" sign in the audience.

Lucy listens with a serious face and then says, "Thank you. Will do."

As Wayne explains that we can call and vote, Lucy spots someone in the audience and waves to them with great excitement and then dips and arches her back as she clenches her fists and throws her hands up in the air while giving that little body shake people do when they’re all excited. Wayne drones on, Lucy blows a kiss to the audience, then gives them a generic wave. And then obviously spots someone else she knows and gives that "Hey—it’s my buddy!" big smile and wave show folk do.

The camera pans across various signs extolling Lucy’s virtues as we go to commercial.

GREAT signs.

I loved this duet.

KT

 


 


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