{"id":104880,"date":"2015-07-07T08:11:22","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T12:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=104880"},"modified":"2015-07-07T08:21:03","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T12:21:03","slug":"kerry-ellis-as-long-as-he-needs-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=104880","title":{"rendered":"Kerry Ellis: &#8220;As Long As He Needs Me&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q9wgMznLYmg\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>\nI thank my friend Alex for sharing this clip of Kerry Ellis (a wonderful actress and singer) as Nancy in <i>Oliver!<\/i>, singing &#8220;As Long As He Needs Me&#8221;. The song is so famous and it has been done by everyone. It&#8217;s hard to hear it fresh. But this performance is phenomenal because what she does is she turns the song into a full and intricate story: it&#8217;s a whole three-act play in three minutes. And where she starts out is not where she ends up. The performance starts out quiet and exhausted. Her body hurts. She has to sit down. She is beaten, devastated, but holding onto the hope that he needs her. Watch how she stands up, how she struggles to manage it, and then how she has to sit down again. Also listen to her gliding phrasing: the lines blend into one another, sounding almost like a series of exhausted sighs\/prayers. This is a woman who is broken. It&#8217;s hard to imagine she will be able to pull off the final stunning notes of the song. Where will she find the strength?<\/p>\n<p>But then watch where it goes, and watch where it ends. It seems to change, go to another level, at the line &#8220;If you are lonely, then you will know &#8230;&#8221; Suddenly, she has strength, she moves towards the audience, reaching out to the loneliness in all of us. That gives her the launch-pad for where she goes next. My entire body erupted in goosebumps the first time I watched it through. The audience starts clapping before she even finishes, and I am not surprised by that at all. The performance has been quiet and yearning and effective, and then suddenly &#8211; out of seemingly nowhere &#8211; the air is filled with electricity, and the power of what she brings explodes out of her, across the stage and into the audience. But that can only happen because of what she has been building upon. The journey happening in front of us is an organic one. She has to start in one place and end up in another, and it has to happen in real-time. She can&#8217;t &#8220;telegraph&#8221; the powerful ending of the song in its opening phrases. The only way to give a performance like this is to <i>really go through the experience<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s one of those performances that keeps its calm, its quiet, its focus, with beautiful control, until &#8211; and you can almost see it happen &#8211; she opens the flood-gates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I thank my friend Alex for sharing this clip of Kerry Ellis (a wonderful actress and singer) as Nancy in Oliver!, singing &#8220;As Long As He Needs Me&#8221;. The song is so famous and it has been done by everyone. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=104880\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104880"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104880"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104887,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104880\/revisions\/104887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}