Boston.com – By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff
John Kelly moves audiences and the singer herself with ‘Paved Paradise’
You won’t see “Joni Mitchell” on Commercial Street in Provincetown, handing out show leaflets to tourists alongside the drag Cher, Barbra, and, yes, Susan Lucci. With her yellow hair, her tilted beret, and a billowy outfit right off the cover of “Hejira,””Ms. Mitchell” appeals to far more rarefied tastes. When she beckons, only the fanatics queue up, eager to hear sweetly edgy trills, lines of wisdom, and some homespun stage banter, eh?
And anyway, this Joni isn’t strictly a drag queen, evoking one shining icon during year after year of hot Cape Cod nights. She is John Kelly, an Obie-winning New York actor, singer, and dancer whose long list of stage credits extends to “Orpheus X” at the American Repertory Theatre and “James Joyce’s The Dead” on Broadway. She is a man who pays camp-free homage to the “woman of heart and mind,” as Mitchell has called herself, with a performance of Mitchell songs that’s as moving as it is funny, as sincere as it is droll.