Simon Green is a cabaret charmer. He is graceful on stage, polished and sophisticated without appearing arch. Enthusiastic about his subject, he generously shares it with well-planned panache and personal warmth. Lean and lanky, dapper in a dark suit, white shirt and tie, Green presents Coward at Christmas: A Cabaret for Noël, to Holiday E:Café at 59E59 Theaters.

Noël Coward, perhaps England's 20th century patron saint of theater, was a proud Englishman, sentimental about his "London Pride," his "Room With a View," and nostalgic when he left its shores. He once said of himself that he merely had "a talent to amuse." Green points out that the man who wrote songs like "What's Going to Happen to the Tots?" with such breezy nonchalance, was an extremely hard-working artist who published 60 plays and 300 songs. He was also a producer, director and actor. Green, an accomplished stage actor himself, does not mimic Coward but brings his own theatrical pacing, humor, and delivery to the various moods in Coward's music. The rarely heard "Couldn't We Keep On Dancing?", a Coward tune that Green and his accompanist/arranger David Shrubsole discovered in the British library, becomes a short story of wit and determination.

Green's stress on words in "There Was You" evoked the personal sentiment that Coward often camouflaged with savoir-faire. Green knows he does not have to mimic Coward to interpret his songs with intelligence and meaning. Coward does require precise diction, and every nuance, every syllable is there to be relished in songs like "Why Must the Show Go On?" interspersed with quotes from Coward's show business journal. Green includes Coward's own lyrics to Cole Porter's "Let's Do It" and Jerome Kern's "I'm Old Fashioned," the two American songwriters Coward most admired.

Accompanist Shrubsole brought an upbeat freshness to "Someday I'll Find You" and followed it with "Come the Wild, Wild Weather." His arrangements of "Twentieth Century Blues" and "This Is a Changing World" are as contemporary as the recent election.

Without one holiday song, Simon Green's Noël gift is a treat in the Christmas stocking.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
December 18, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org