Cabaret Is a Life
Ester Goldberg Lightens Up Dark Times
By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2003; Page C01
Let's say you're the girlie type. Pink fingernails. High heels. A walk that's a bit
twisty in the hips.
It's Oscar night and you've come out for the Ester Goldberg "Big Swanky
Glamorous Hollywood Awards Party" at the Washington Plaza Hotel, and you're watching Goldberg, the diva, get ready. Truth be told, you're plenty diva
yourself, but the sudden flash of purple sequins from Goldberg's floor-length
gown fixes you in its pale, flickering light. You're dazzled by her electric-blue
eye shadow and velvet noir lashes and the dame's sheer showiness.
Her bright reddish hair, teased nearly horizontal, flips like a 1950s starlet's, and
as Goldberg rifles through her suitcase, a shapely turn of calf peeks from behind a long split. "Here are my pantyhose," says Ester, smiling coquettishly.
Suddenly you find yourself feeling curiously underdone. Perhaps you need a light
holding spritz for a bit more volume to the hair, you think. A little color on the
cheeks to bring out some inner radiance?
Sure, they're fighting in the Middle East, but that doesn't mean a showgirl can't
look good, Goldberg maintains. She purses her lips in the mirror. Are you getting
me without the lips? she frets to a nearby photographer. "The lips are what make
Ester," she says, suddenly putting hand to hips and giving kiss-lips to the mirror.
Man, the ovaries on that broad.
Maybe you've had one or two or even three babies in a log cabin without any
pain medication. Ester Goldberg is still waaay more woman than you are.
Michael Airington, 43, who has been playing Ester for nearly nine years, laughs
riotously at this. It's an infectious sound. A balm Airington brought Ester, a bawdy, outspoken Jewish-aunt character with a
weakness for baubles and big production numbers, to Washington four years ago
after a radio stint in Nashville. She became a mainstay hostess of the Washington
gay-bar scene with her wicked game show "The Feud" (based on the popular
game show "Family Feud"). Then she crossed over, so to speak, to the more
mainstream Westin last fall in a show that lasted six weeks and was extended for two more. "The Big Show" was a cabaret-style performance featuring an
orchestral ensemble and backup performers the Screamin' Yentas (nice little
shiksas Ester is trying to convert). Her move to the Washington Plaza is another
six-week run.
The Oscar party is a kickoff for "The Big Swanky After Dinner Show," which
opened last Friday. It features the improvisational "Stump the Jew," where
audience members supply words Ester must turn into song. "Scud missile" is a
first-week-of-war offering. "Sounds like a ballad," she says. A few piano notes
play, and she turns in some impossible ditty about Saddam Hussein breakfasting
at a Baghdad Waffle House that's hit by a Scud.
With the house lights dim and the stage lit up, Ester and the Yentas sing from the
musical "Chicago":
There ain't no gentleman that's fit for any use
And any girl who'd touch your privates for a deuce
And even kids'll kick your shins and give you sass
Nobody's got no class
These are dark times. They stink of war and bombs and weirdo illnesses. They
cast a pall over the country and the city and maybe the hotel audience, but that's
why you've got to give it up onstage, Airington says. "People want to be able to
turn off the television and think of something else."
Ester's is a cozy, intimate, supper-club kind of show. It is star energy without the
arm's length. Entertainment you can touch. And while Airington is a man and
Goldberg is all woman, please don't call either a drag queen.
"She's a character, she's an actor, she's Mrs. Doubtfire," says Airington. "She's
fun." And, like Airington, she's had such a wild ride so far.
Airington was born in Annapolis, where his father abandoned him as a
5-year-old after his mother died. He was then raised by his grandmother, dirt
poor in Virginia Beach.
"Growing up, I was the weakling," he says. "I found out I had this uncanny
ability to do the voice of dead TV stars and it made people laugh." He used the
voices to keep from getting beaten up, he says. And he used the voices because
"I always said I was going to be famous," Airington recalls. There was just
something about all that love.
When he was a teenager, a chance call to a local radio station looking for singers led to an audition as a comedian. This was a stretch since he actually just didimpressions -- Zsa Zsa Gabor, Mr. Haney from "Green Acres," and Paul Lynde.
But he combined those with jokes culled from library books and landed a spot as
the opening act for country singer Mel Tillis in 1975. This led to gigs for singers
Della Reese and Rosemary Clooney. He landed in Hollywood at age 19.
Out of costume, Airington is a lean, youngish-looking man, his cornflower-blue
eyes still very clear though they've seen a lot. At his apartment in Northwest
Washington, Airington flips through a scrapbook from his Hollywood years as a
favorite sitcom guest star on shows such as "Archie Bunker's Place" and "The
Jeffersons." Here's a 1980s head shot with long feathery hair. Here are Polaroids
with Soupy Sales at a March of Dimes telethon. Here's a napkin from Elizabeth
Taylor's 60th birthday party.
He was able to buy his grandmother a nice home before she died in 1982. But by
that time, "I had discovered cocaine," he says.
He was young and gay, druggy and needy, and flush with cash, minor production deals and B-list fame. His was a 1980s L.A.-flameout kind of story that ended in a nervous breakdown and a bottle of prescription pills in 1991. It didn't kill him. And when a friend persuaded him to go to Nashville to dry out, he began working for a radio station there. That's when Ester, a voice based on a woman at the Lancome counter at Bullock's department store in Los Angeles, asserted herself. And that's when Airington rediscovered the healing power of going on with the show.
Ester Goldberg was an entertainment reporter, she dispensed dating advice, she
explained Hanukah to drive-time listeners. She got fan mail, propositions,
requests for personal appearances. "The Jewish Community Center wanted Ester
to come out and open their pool," Airington says, laughing. "I thought, 'Oh my
gosh, they do not realize she's not real.' "
After four years in Nashville, Airington decided to flesh Goldberg out. Dame
Edna, the Australian housewife played by actor Barry Humphries who declared
herself royalty, was already on Broadway, so in 1999 Airington decided to come
to Washington. "To get Ester into politics."
He immediately joined an upscale catering company because "Ester had to learn
to work a room." Within a month he was serving breakfast to Al Gore, and
taking notes.
It's a Thursday night in March at Hamburger Mary's in Northwest Washington,
and a team fielded by the gay advocacy group Human Rights Campaign --
captained by Candace Gingrich, Newt's half sister -- is playing "The Feud"
(which used to be known as "Feygele Feud") against the team that's organizing
the 2003 Gay Softball World Series. Goldberg's sidekick, "Dick Dawson," is
queued up with questions. But first there is a moment of silence, "whatever your
politics," for everyone in the theater of war.
Then they play on.
Name a movie-line quote a gay man would know.
The answers come fast. No more wire hangers, from "Mommie Dearest"; If you
don't have anything nice to say about someone, come sit by me, from "Steel
Magnolias"; and Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy night, from "All
About Eve." Goldberg works the crowd with a campy, naughty Bette
Midler-style wit. One contestant's non-answer earns a "dumb-[expletive] blonde
award."
"She's a local hostess everybody knows," says Gingrich. "A grande dame."
Now it's Oscar night at the Washington Plaza. Because of the war, the Academy
Awards have dispensed with their red carpet, but Goldberg is working hers.
Someone's wearing a tie from Sears ("You must be from Bowie"), but there's also leather (of course) and shag and sequins and fringe. The Washington Gay Men's Chorus has a table. There's Kip and Jeff, Ester's regulars, and all the other pretty, pretty boys she calls friends. About 150 folks in all -- a number of them straight.
Packy McGaughan, a lawyer from Clarksburg, and Donnelly Gillen, a University
of Maryland student, had just seen Goldberg the week before, when she made a
personal appearance at the 50th birthday party for a Chevy Chase lawyer.
Someone told Gillen's father: "You know she's kind of got a Dame Edna thing
going on." He replied: "Yeah, but Dame Edna's really a man."
She reminds people of someone they know, someone in their family, McGaughan
says. "She's a little forward, she always wants you to get married. She's not
restricted to subculture. She'll play anywhere."
Onstage Ester, her purple sequins still flashing, with the Screamin' Yentas close
behind, works her songs, "Big Noise From Winnetka" and "I Dreamed I Was
Laura Bush Last Night."
It's show-must-go-on, intimate, cabaret-style performing. Entertainment just
close-in enough that makes the rest of the world slip away.