On August 18, just two weeks after presenting Liza Minnelli and Alan Cumming on his Icon Series at the Ice Palace, Daniel Nardicio scored another coup by giving us Sandra Bernhard, with special guest Lea Delaria, both breathtakingly irreverent comics and singers, assisted by pianist Jeremy Siskind, with DJ Chuck McTague on sound and lights.

Delaria opened by belting out, complete with a scatted section, a lusty “I Can Cook, Too,” Hildy’s song from “On the Town,” which she sang on Broadway, and brought down the house. She played with the idea of what we call ourselves—“You know the difference between a dyke and a lesbian: it’s about $150,000—and our significant others and, inspired by Jane Austen, started a chant of, “Bring back ‘traveling companion!’” She compared Loehmann’s, with its communal dressing room, to Disneyland—“It’s so fucking titillating!”—until she was mistaken for a man in there, which led to her singing, with heavy irony, but not a word changed, “I Enjoy Being a Girl,” from “Flower Drum Song,” and invited clapping along.

photo by Koitz
Lea Delaria & Sandra Bernhard
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On being different, Delaria declared, “If not for the butches and little pissant nellie faggots, there would be no gay movement! We should celebrate our difference!” She had great fun with a song from 1938, replete with double entendres, about “My pussy fell in the well”—with mandatory sing-along.

Bernhard periodically referred back to Delaria’s final song, giving it her own twists, to wit, “My pussy went to hell” and “My pussy’s in the shitter/feel free to Twitter.” On forgoing fancy couture for the evening: “I’m going ship-to-shore” because “This island is funky,” and to prove it, brought a fireplace grate out from backstage. Riffing on “Rocky Mountain High Colorado,” she branded its population “the most boring white mother-fuckers on the face of the earth!”

“I like being Jewish,” Bernhard told us, but confided, “I started to eat shrimp again,” calling her home “a treyf fucking festival.” On having a 14-year-old child: “I am a mother … fucker,” who would not let her daughter have a cell phone or a computer until this year, and concluded, “And she respects me, and she is frightened of me, and she adores me!”

Bernhard held forth about Lady Gaga’s Thanksgiving television special and sang “Edge of Glory.” She praised colleague Delaria, saying, “Lea is a beacon of truth,” and sang “I can’t fight the feeling anymore,” embellished with high kicks and other vivid visuals, as the climax of a most amazing night.