Review: Camille Sings Tennille at Don't Tell Mama is a Must-See Cabaret

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After seeing Camille Diamond's show, people will be saying Do That To Me One More Time.

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MAC Award winner Camille Diamond premiered her new show CAMILLE SINGS TENNILLE on May 3rd, and, bottom line on top: it was perfect. This Toni Tennille tribute show isn’t just a perfect tribute show, it is a perfect cabaret show. There are no notes to be given, no notes to be had, only praise. Camille Diamond and co. have created a show that must be seen, that is to be enjoyed. Speaking honestly, even if you didn’t know a thing about Toni Tennille, you would enjoy Camille Sings Tennille because of the right proper, honest, and straightforward way it has been scripted and is being performed. There is a craft to creating your tribute show, very specific and detail-oriented, and Diamond has checked off all the boxes. There are plenty of histories about the woman who stood at the center mic with The Captain and Tennille, there are factoids and trivias and tidbits that even I, a die-hard Captain and Tennille fan in the real time that was my youth, did not know. But these factoids, trivias, and tidbits are not laid out in a linear fashion, they are not recited like a book report, they are not memorized from a computer search. It is clear that Camille Diamond also loved the combo and the lady in real time, in her youth, and that she has carried that devotion throughout the years, picking up the new albums, the just-released CDs, the memoir, and, then, used the Tennille media to fill her heart and inform her show. This is made apparent from the opening monologue, which is not about Tennille - it is about Camille. That’s where the gold lies. When doing your tribute show, it is far more interesting to hear about how, about why, about what the honoree and their work have done to brighten your days, to liven your life, to enrich you, body and soul. Camille Diamond isn’t messing around with a script that has been cobbled together from online searches - she is telling the truth, hers and Tennille’s, and every word she utters feels of the moment, spontaneous, and absolutely authentic. That’s not just a good tribute cabaret, that’s good cabaret.

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For her eighty-minute musical show (that felt like a quick, compact sixty minutes), Camille has engaged the services of Director Lennie Watts (who was generous enough to lend his own vocals to the proceedings), and Musical Director Tracy Stark (also donating some oohs, aahs, and la la la’s from the piano) to guide her into Tribute Show Lane, and the team is very much en pointe, especially Stark, whose arrangements have reached a new level here. Diamond isn’t singing Tennille’s or The Captain’s arrangements (except for one very important number #bighint), she is singing these Captain and Tennille songs, these Toni Tennille songs, her own way. That’s another factor in making a perfect tribute show - she honors her idol, but she also honors her own place as a storyteller. And Camille is a true storyteller. All of the acting is in place. The phrasing of the lyrics, the expressiveness of all of her physicality, the commitment to the plotline of each song and her show, all line up with intentionality. Stark’s treatments of these numbers, particularly the mash-ups, are beyond reproach.

As for the music itself… somebody call Toni Tennille, she needs to see and hear this. Camille Diamond has such a pretty voice, one that is capable of tones reminiscent of Tennille’s one-of-a-kind sound but that stands all by itself, sounding like an audible representation of that which I drink every morning - luscious homemade cashew milk warmed up with a drizzle of honey (it’s addictive). Acting, storytelling, humor, and humanity, AND a pretty voice? It is almost an embarrassment of riches. There is also the fact that Camille has chosen a catalogue of songs that represents Tennille’s trajectory while presenting her own versatility. There are the pop hits of The Captain and Tennille, like “Can’t Stop Dancin’” and “Lonely Night (Angel Face)” that give Diamond and co. a chance to rock out, shake their collective booties, and just have some fun, but there are numbers from Tennille’s solo career, when she was singing jazz and The Great American Songbook. One of the impressive things that Stark has done for Diamond is to meld the two genres, using treatments that combine “Teach Me Tonight” with “The Way I Want To Touch You,” or “Mind Your Love” with “This Can’t Be Love,” all the while making room for Camille’s impeccable script, which is full of asides and ad-libs designed to keep Camille from being shoved aside by Tennille. Particularly effective is a medley that Stark worked on with Kristopher Lowe that combines “Do It Again” with “Do That To Me One More Time,” providing Diamond with one of the show’s many highlights. Highs happen similarly with Neil Sedaka ’s “Sad Eyes” and Harold Arlen ’s “Blues in the Night,” a treatment Stark created with Mr. Watts that gives Diamond a shot at some bone fide blues, albeit not the only blues in this night, as Diamond delivers, early in the show, Tennille and Dragon’s own “1954 Boogie Blues.” See what I mean? Inasmuch as Tennille could sing any genre, so, it appears, can Camille. Observe the ease with which she plays “Le Jazz Hot” from the musical Victor/Victoria, which Tennille toured with in the late Nineties. It is noteworthy, the range that Diamond puts in the spotlight of her tribute show, but that is kind of the idea, for that is what Tennille did with her own career. She sang pop, she sang blues, she sang jazz, she sang standards, she sang Broadway… and within those genres, she showed different sides of herself, sides which are present in Camille Sings Tennille.

People think of The Captain and Tennille as sweet. When you hear songs like “Circles” and “Disney Girls,” when you listen to “Muskrat Love” and “Love Will Keep Us Together,” you can’t help but think wholesome. The Captain and Tennille had an image of love, of commitment, of devotion, of a kind of purity. But they also produced music about sex. They recorded sensual songs about the personal side of love like “Mind Your Love,” “You Never Done It Like That,” “The Way I Want To Touch You,” and one of the sexiest songs of ever, “Do That To Me One More Time,” and Diamond and co. are presenting those songs in Camille’s way, with Tracy’s treatments, and with Lennie’s guidance, the wholesomeness and the sensuality of the Captain and Tennille brand blend seamlessly with the artistry of Toni Tennille’s post-C&T days, when her work leaned into jazz and standards. This is absolute perfection in creation.

Camille Diamond is aided mightily in her efforts by Drummer Don Kelly and Bassist Owen Yost, who round out the sounds needed to present the Toni Tennille catalogue. Those pop sounds and jazz treatments would sound a tiny bit tiny without Yost and Kelly to bolster them with their brilliance, so it’s a good thing they are up on the stage of Don’t Tell Mama’s Brick Room to make more rich the reward of the programming. And, on opening night, Team Diamond doubled down on the reward by bringing one of New York City’s (heck, one of the world’s) greatest jazz singers up to the stage to do a duet from The Captain And Tennille Show. On television, Toni Tennille did a medley of jazzy torch songs with Ella Fitzgerald . It is only fitting that Camille Diamond should sing that same duet with the One, the Only Gabrielle Stravelli . It was the crowning glory on an unforgettable night of cabaret storytelling, and while I cannot say whether or not Ms. Stravelli will appear at subsequent performances of Camille Sings Tennille, I can say that this is one of the best cabaret shows you’re likely to find in New York right now. Either hope for an extension or get a ticket to one of the two remaining performances, and catch Camille Diamond as she keeps on singin’ the good songs.

perfection, noun,

per·​fec·​tion, pər-ˈfek-shən

Simple Definition

1: the quality or state of being perfect: such as

a: freedom from fault or defect: flawlessness

b: maturity

c: the quality or state of being saintly

2

a: an exemplification of supreme excellence

b: an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence

3: the act or process of perfecting

Camille Sings Tennille plays Don't Tell Mama tonight, May 7th at 7 pm. Tickets can be had HERE . The next show is May 9th at 7 pm, and those reservations can be made HERE .

Camille Diamond has a website HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/cabaret/article/Review-Love-Will-Keep-Audiences-Going-To-Dont-Tell-Mama-For-CAMILLE-SINGS-TENNILLE-20260507)._