Gay men of a certain age have strong feelings about Broadway divas, who modeled an outsize swagger in an era when they themselves couldn’t. Of all the give-’em-heck floorboard belters in this particular canon, few have attained the sainted status of Carol Channing, the blond-mopped, lisping “Hello Dolly” icon who turns 93 next week with her stage brio intact. When she was helped onstage last night at Town Hall for a special birthday tribute, grinning widely and wearing a white bouclé jacket and slacks, the cavernous house, packed mostly with middle-aged and older gay men, jumped to its feet and, for 10 minutes straight, released the sort of primal roar that might have accompanied a winning Superbowl pass.  Channing was then gently and wittily interviewed by Justin Vivian Bond, the downtown cabaret personality, in a repeat performance of a production staged by the famed promoter Daniel Nardicio last summer on Fire Island. Their rapport last night was warm, with much spontaneous hand-holding, and when Channing early on referred to Bond, who is transgender, as “he,” she corrected herself with admirable swiftness. Riffing on a childhood tale of Channing’s, in which a cousin asked her where she wanted to be buried, Bond put the question to her again. “Right between the Curran and Geary Theaters” in San Francisco, answered Channing, who grew up there. “There’s a fire escape, but they’ll have to take that down,” she cracked, bringing down the house for the first of many times. To which Bond rejoined: “You might need that fire escape, depending on which direction you’re going.”  Channing drew laughs when she noted that once, in a Carol Channing drag lookalike contest, “I came in third.” She sang two songs, one an old Southern folk song her father taught her, the other a Sophie Tucker ode to gambling. Finally, movingly, she performed her keynote monologue from “Hello Dolly,” in which she asks the spirit of her beloved late husband, Ephraim Levi, to “Let me go!” so that she might fully rejoin the living. A misty-eyed, audience-wide sing-along to “Hello Dolly” and then “Happy Birthday” followed. More than once, Channing rose gingerly from her seat to stretch her arms toward the crowd, as though to embrace everyone present.  Her appearance last night was preceded by a song set from Bond, who, in an Emilio Pucci dress and sleek updo, had buffed away most of the hilariously jagged edges of Kiki and Herb, Bond’s former stage act, and emerged, in the performer’s words, as “an aspirational white woman of elegance.” An otherwise languorous rendition of Burt Bacharach’s “The Look of Love” was broken up by a deranged monologue about the 1960s French singer Claudine Longet’s alleged murder of her pro-skier boyfriend. That bit felt just arcane and bizarro enough to remind Bond followers of the singer’s roots without distracting from an evening meant to celebrate Channing — a showgirl whose nuttiness was too shrewdly honed to ever be classified as camp.
To toast her 93rd birthday, the Broadway icon brought down the house in a show with the cabaret performer Justin Vivian Bond.