Tina Fabrique is scatolicious.
That's right, scatolicious. It's our word, and we're sticking with it.
You would too if you heard Fabrique scat and sing and scat some more as she oozed the essence of Ella Fitzgerald in Arizona Theatre Company's production of "Ella."
She scats in "It Don't Mean A Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" early in the show. She scats midway through the first act in "You'll Have To Swing It (Mr. Paganini)."
She scats like crazy when the musicians play "Flying Home."
That woman did Fitzgerald proud. This production does, for that matter.
OK, OK, it's not perfect: The script is thin, and the backup musicians, who shine with their instruments, dim when they have to take on characters in Fitzgerald's life.
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But Fabrique — oh my. She captures the purity that made Fitzgerald's voice so powerful. And the girlishness. The unbridled joy in singing and working with the band.
She doesn't look much like Fitzgerald, and really doesn't sing much like her — though her singing is mighty impressive. But she becomes Fitzgerald, nonetheless.
So much so that we believe we are in Nice, France, in a concert hall watching Fitzgerald practice the patter her manager insists the audiences want. She's not comfortable revealing herself, but she does it anyway. And does it with a weight of sadness — she's just returned from her much-loved younger sister's funeral. In between monologues about growing up, her marriages, her struggles, her loves, she sings. But she's never quite comfortable in the skin of a woman who's suppose to reveal who she is.
The second act is later that day in 1966, at the concert. This is where Ella shines. She loves the stage, she loves to sing, to scat. She embraces the audience with her voice. And while she patters a bit, she knows they came to hear her sing and scat, and that's what's she's gonna give them.
Fabrique handed us both sides of the singer — the unhappy, pained Ella who hates revealing herself, and the joyous one who can't help but reveal her soul as she sings.
That band consists of musicians who are up to the task of playing backup to such a powerhouse. Horn player Brian "Lord" Sledge, even when he flubbed a couple notes, mesmerized as he played the complex music of such composers as George and Ira Gershwin or Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. George Caldwell on piano, Rodney Harper on drums, and Clifton Kellem on bass all infused the music with life and spontaneity.
But most of all it is Fabrique who reveals Ella through her thoughts, her songs, her music.
She is, in short, scatolicious.
Arizona Theatre Company's production of "Ella" is at 2 and 7 p.m. today; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday; 7:30 p.m. Thursday; 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. next Sunday at the Temple of Music and Art, 330 S. Scott Ave. Tickets are $31-$51. It continues through Dec. 20. Call 622-2823..
