WHO LOVES YOU, BABY? A Posthumous Lounge Act Starring Tom DiMenna as Telly Savalas Extends at the SoHo Playhouse through April 15, 2012

New York, NY – It was a highlight of the 2011 New York International Fringe Festival and for the past three months Who Loves You, Baby? has packed the house at The Huron Club at The SoHo Playhouse (15 Vandam Street). Originally slated to close on December 30, but Tom DiMenna will continue to revive the bald headed sex symbol, Telly Savalas, three times a week through April 2012.

The show, written by New York’s own Hunter Nelson, has had everyone from hipsters to hip-replacements rolling in the aisles. Under the direction of Taylor Negron, the young comic chameleon Tom DiMenna channels the unmistakable chutzpah of long-dead 70’s sex symbol Telly Savalas. That’s right! The no-nonsense Greek-American actor best known as TV’s Lt. Theo Kojak has taken flesh once again. And he sings, too! Accompanied by virtuosic pianist Alex Leonard, and with a special appearance by Henry Kaiser as George Savalas, (Telly’s “banana-head” brother).

Who Loves You, Baby? turns the conventions of traditional cabaret to its own purposes, diagnosing and – before your very eyes – curing this generation’s all-around cultural incontinence, forcibly remedying our decade’s ever-weakening grasp on romance and masculine sexual identity. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Who Loves You, Baby? has been called: “You will not see a funnier play than Who Loves You, Baby?! As Savalas, Tom DiMenna is hilarious and cool like Telly.” Nytheater.com, “Who Loves You, Baby? is hilarious. Tom DiMenna is front and center as a dead ringer for the now-dead Savalas. It’s a brilliantly breezily bombastic performance that induces giggles galore for its gumption and straight-faced pontification. “ Nitelife exchange; “I laughed my way from the beginning right through the end.” LA Fringe Review; “Tom DiMenna plays the hairless icon with comedic grace… [the show is] simultaneously ridiculous and refreshing.” LA Theatre Review

Audiences have been brought to tears by the string of genuine laughs that DiMenna serves up with such fresh and unexpected timing. And yet beneath the surface of Who Loves You, Baby? Tom as Telly subversively grapples with darker aspects of the human condition: mortality, legacy, love, life, and death. “Every man should know his darkness,” he warns. “That’s where art comes from. That’s where Guernica comes from. That’s where Beethoven’s 5th comes from. And damn right that’s where Kojak comes from!”The show serves as a touching tribute to Savalas while delivering an earnest message to today’s hipsters not to sacrifice romance for cheap and easy thrills. And to powder their feet.

Come witness the fundamentally indescribable lounge act that’s in a league of its own, and see for yourself why the world needs Telly! After all, Who Loves You, Baby?