John Harding
Howard County Times

The new show on stage at Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia is more playlist than play. But no one can deny it's a great playlist.

"I Left My Heart -- A Salute to the Music of Tony Bennett" has even less meat on its bones than that Frank Sinatra tribute at Toby's back in 2009. Instead of a quartet of singers and a smattering of biographical anecdotes, this time there's only a trio kicking up all the dust in the center ring…

The Great American Songbook is the real subject here: It just so happens that through his five or six decades in show business, Tony Bennett earmarked most of its better pages.

The 40 songs chosen to represent that singular career complement Bennett's easy-going persona. You can see his perpetual boyish optimism in effervescent numbers like "Steppin' Out" and "The Best Is Yet to Come," his irascible romanticism in "That Old Black Magic" and "It's Wonderful," and something of his inevitable come-downs in "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Let's Face the Music and Dance."

Valentine's Day has passed, but a song like "Embraceable You" never goes out of fashion, because it expresses the perfect tenderness in a moment of selfless surrender to love. If you've never had a moment like that, Tony Bennett is probably not your man.

The cast consists of Kevin McAllister, Larry Munsey and Chris Rudy. All three men can command a stage and please an audience. When it comes to showmanship you would have to look long and far for a more likable trio of leading men. The audience itself is wooed and courted by their attention all evening. At points, the entertainers slip into dance kicks and tap routines, or don formal wear and even invite a lucky tableside lady out for a ballroom turn.

Salute to Tony Bennett at Toby’s

Priscilla Mack
Carroll County Times

"I Left my Heart," a salute to the music of Tony Bennett, is a toe-tapping, hand-clapping, finger-snapping show currently at Toby's Dinner Theatre in Columbia.

The three singers, Kevin McAllister, Lawrence Munsey and Chris Rudy are perfect in performing Bennett's songs.

Tony Bennett covered songs by Duke Ellington, and Henry Mancini as well as standards by Irvin Berlin, George Gershwin, and Cole Porter.

Of course, the show includes Tony's signature hit, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco."

This show captures the essence of Tony Bennett in song, as well as video highlights of Bennett from the early 1950s until today.

I Left My Heart – a Salute to the Music of Tony Bennett

DC TheatreScene.com

Carol Chastang
February 8, 2011

“I don’t follow the latest fashion,” Tony Bennett said of his artistic instincts in a 2010 interview with the Winston-Salem Journal.  “I never sing a song that’s badly written. Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and others just created the best songs that had ever been written.  These are classics, and finally they’re not being treated as light entertainment.   This is classical music.”

The timeless songs Bennett chose to perform, and the charming, classy ebullience he exudes when singing those Duke Ellington jazz numbers, George Gershwin standards  and Henry Mancini ballads are celebrated by three talented actor/singers in the thoroughly entertaining “I Left My Heart – a Salute to the Music of Tony Bennett” at Toby’s Dinner Theatre of Columbia.

It appears that director/choreographer Debra Buonaccorsi decided to have three Tonys channeling in their own way—not impersonating—the legendary Tony Bennett. So there’s the young, enthusiastic Tony (the appealing Chris Rudy), who belts out with precocious authority “The Best is Yet to Come” at the end of the “Early Years Set.”  Rudy brings the joy to the show, as witnessed when he sings Harold Arlen and John H. Mercer’s  “That Old Black Magic.”

Between tunes, the actors provide a narrative of Bennett’s career highlights.  We learn that in his youth Anthony Benedetto worked as a singing waiter (not unlike the waiters who sing at Toby’s), and a few years later he was the opening act at a Greenwich Village nightclub for Pearl Bailey. Bob Hope was in the audience, and later invited Benedetto to join his road tour. Hope also suggested he shorten his name.

Director Buonaccorsi did a great job of keeping the revue short, tight and snappy.  That’s probably how Bennett likes it.  The first act ran about 35 minutes, and between the singing, dancing, banter and Bennett history, before you know it the lights are up for intermission.

Kevin McAllister gave us cool, swinging, mid-career Tony.  Singing “Crazy Rhythm” McAllister, solely accompanied by Tom Harold on the drums, delivered a driving, stirring vocal interaction with the drummer that had the audience moving to the beat.

In addition to Harold, the first-rate band was led by musical director Douglas Lawler on piano, Frank Higgins on Bass and Tony Neenan on trumpet.   Staged in the round, with a circular platform in the center of the floor and candles on every table, the theatre became an intimate supper club, and later a hazy, slightly smoke-filled room.

The wonderful Lawrence B. Munsey was perfect as the “elder statesman of jazz” Tony.  With his marvelous voice he does justice to Irving Berlin’s “Steppin’ Out” and “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”  Munsey is clearly the solid song and dance man of the trio, and during “Face the Music” he does some snazzy cha-cha moves and smooth pirouettes—complete with a swagger.

Rudy’s, McAllister’s and Munsey’s voices harmonize nicely as they performed “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” and Duke Ellington’s “It Don’t Mean a Thing.”  The usual lighthearted banter and some modest dance moves carried the trio through several numbers.   Act two’s “The Film Set” featured covers of film songs that Bennett recorded.  While two overhead screens showed clips of “The Days of Wine and Roses,”  “Love Story” and “Casablanca” (“As Time Goes By”), the actors performed the hit songs from those films. That bit of staging could have been distracting, but it provided a nice touch—offering a connect-the-dots support for those who weren’t alive when those movies were made.

There are a few performers around today who relish the Gershwin and Porter standards and perform them. But Tony Bennett is one of the few surviving artists who can say they worked with the likes of Count Basie, Art Blakey and Herbie Mann, while singing and reviving those tunes at a time when they were considered dusty relics.  I Left My Heart seems to possess a similar mission—reminding those of a certain age, and informing those born after the advent of MTV—of the beauty and wit and enduring power of those American classics.