She sings with truth, wisdom and sensitivity. He accompanies her on piano with confidence, respect, and purity. Their signature is music of respect, authenticity, and lack of excess.

Sandy Stewart and Bill Charlap, mother and son, returned for the fifth year to the Algonquin Hotel's Oak Room with Make Me Rainbows, a show of nostalgia, of love once treasured and now lost. They opened with "There'll be Some Changes Made" (Higgins and Overstreet), the idea of "changes" was not rendered with the usual pluck, but rather acknowledging the inevitable. This mood led into Kern and Hammerstein's "All in Fun," a song that asks, "When all is said and done/How far can it go?" In the show, only one song, "Some of These Days" by Sheldon Brooks, was given a subtle swinging up-tempo.

While Make Me Rainbows' concentration on ballads lent it a pensive air, it was surprisingly not depressing. Stewart delivered her songs with intimate perceptiveness, sensitive to the truth of the lyrics and drawing in her listeners. "Tea for Two" (Youmans and Caesar) was more redolent of bygone youthful memories than youthful dreams. The show's title song, "Make Me Rainbows" (Bergmans and Williams), created impressionistic images that proved the need for someone to love. Sentiments of optimism were gently rendered with "I Got the Sun in the Mornin'" (Berlin) and the show's closer, "My Ship" (Weill/Gershwin).

Charlap is a complex, thoughtful musician, who illustrates the song's emotion with his fierce, often discordant, piano chords, strong rhythm, and dizzying finger work. He highlighted his mother's songs with dark, spare chords in Harbach and Kern's "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "Last Night When We Were Young" (Harburg/Arlen), and "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning" (Hilliard and Mann). Charlap's accompaniment illuminated the aura of reminiscence permeating Make Me Rainbows.

Stewart relayed no patter except when introducing her son's jazz solo of "I Wanna Be a Dancin' Man," "Blue Room," and a driving, "The Lady is a Tramp." Her songs spoke for her with haunting authenticity, her smoky voice controlled and her readings intense.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
January 15, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org