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Could you work with someone you love? How
would your relationship last being together 24/7? I did it once for 5
years and it ended bitterly.
Love is a cabaret couple
Last Updated: 4:47 AM, February 13, 2010
Posted: 1:55 AM, February 13, 2010
Singing for your supper is hard enough. But singing with the one who shares
your life, love and studio apartment? That just might kill you.
Kudos, then, to Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano, hailed as "the Fred and
Ginger of cabaret." But even Astaire and Rogers weren't married Upper West
Siders, with two cats.
Wed for five years, the forty-ish pair still play separate gigs -- but you'll
more often find them sharing the same stage: Comstock, suave on piano and
vocals, with Fasano, singing sultrily across from him.
Then again, they've never done eight shows in 96 hours before.
"Barbara's voice teacher tells us to take it one show at a time," Comstock
says of the marathon starting tomorrow, when they race between the Oak Room and
the 92nd Street Y.
"We've stocked up on Red Bull," Fasano quips. It's a rare, rehearsal-free
morning, and they're hanging out in their suite at the Algonquin Hotel, one
happy perk of working the Oak Room.
Not only is the suite bigger than their studio, but it has real doors.
Fasano, who has a diva's temper to match her voice -- she grew up on Long
Island, mimicking Barbra Streisand -- likes to slam the occasional door, and
their apartment has only sliding ones.
Thank God, they say, for Comstock's rehearsal studio, where he retreats when
they need air.
Humor helps.
"We go to bed laughing, and we wake up the same way," she says, her eyes on
his.
And yet, when they met, 13 years ago -- each one a cabaret star in his or her
own right -- there were no sparks.
"We were involved with other people," he says, diplomatically, then nudges
her. "Go ahead, say it. What was your image of me?"
"I thought he was a priggish WASPy guy who was probably dry as toast." Pause.
"I really didn't know him at all!"
They went their separate ways, now and then catching one another's acts. By
2002, Fasano (who'd been wed briefly before) had, by her count, dated "every
jerk in New York."
At which point, she said, "Screw it, I'm done," and went out and adopted two
kittens, ready for a life alone.
His e-mail arrived that day. "He wanted to know if I'd like to have supper
with him after my next show," she recalls. "There was something about the word
'supper' that was so titillating!"
It was, both say, a perfect first date, starting with beers at Chumley's and
the bond that comes when you realize you hate all the same things (pretentious
people, pretentious clubs, pretentious restaurants).
It was going swell, and then he asked if they could grab a taxi to her place.
"I thought, here it comes," she says. But no, it didn't: He walked her to the
door, kissed her cheek and got back in the cab. Fasano was flummoxed. Did he
want to date her or duet with her? By their second outing -- ostensibly to
review music for his next gig -- she was even more confused. Until he kissed
her.
"It was like, boom!" she says. "I knew from that minute, I'm gonna marry that
guy!" That summer, she did.
They didn't think about merging careers until Comstock had a gig out of town
and brought her along. The producer knew her work and asked if she wouldn't mind
doing a little something. They put together a few duets, got several standing
ovations -- and decided to keep it up.
These days they have their own musical shorthand. If he's deep in rehearsals
and she's lonely at home, she'll call and sing the bass line from the jazz tune,
"Coming Home, Baby," into his answering machine. That's his cue to pack it in.
He's also a prolific writer of love notes. "He leaves me little notes all the
time, to find around the apartment," she says. It started when they'd been
dating a month and had what she calls "a tiff." He left a Post-it on her kitchen
counter with his phone number, signed, "From Eric Comstock, who loves you,
incidentally."
That was many notes ago. And while there've been other tiffs along the way,
they're resolved by the time they hit the stage.
"I'm a big believer in apologies," she says, "and we don't hold grudges."
Now, when she looks at him across a piano in a room full of strangers, her
thoughts range from "Someone needs a haircut" to "I can't believe I'm married to
this wonderful man!"
It's like that Phil Springer/Carolyn Leigh song they sing:
How little we know
How much to discover
What chemical forces flow
From lover to lover . . .
Love, truly, is a many splendored thing.
Eric Comstock & Barbara Fasano perform "This Thing Called Love" at
the Oak Room through March 6; they're also doing a Johnny Burke tribute at the
92nd Street Y Feb. 20-22.