Raissa Katona Bennett opened her new show at the Metropolitan Room on Mother’s Day to a small but excited audience who were eager to hear what she has to say as she reveals the milestones of her life on a hopeful search for beauty and peace, purging the old, embracing the new. This is Raissa’s special form of spring cleaning – what we gather, what we keep, where we put things.

Her lovely, lilting soprano voice speaks to the audience with a sincere charm as she opens with Julie Gold’s “The Girl I Found” segueing into Amanda McBroom’s “Putting Things Away.”  Raissa is a story-teller. She “Bookends” (Paul Simon) with “The Picture in the Hall” (Craig Carnelia), fixing a delicious sandwich of realities. 

Her training as a Broadway performer is the asset enabling her audience to hear every nuance in her beautiful diction as she tells how “I Furnished My One-Room Apartment” (Hoffman/Mooney) "…on the corner of Hester and Orchard" with "treasures in trash cans."  Raissa performed as Christine Daae in Phantom of the Opera,” the Actor’s Fund Concert of Chess and on National Tours of Cats and Parade.  This comes in very handy when preparing a solo cabaret show!   

A highlight is Maltby/Shire’s ever funny and clever “You Wanna Be My Friend” from Closer Than Ever, a great acting piece, performed with musical director David Caldwell. Raissa raises the bar on this rendition!  The haunting “Will You?” (Frankel/Korie), from Broadway’s recent Grey Gardens, fits gently into Raissa’s coloratura. Kennon/Engquist’s comedic and frantic lyric in “That’s The Good News” "…my figure is in peril, we know that you’re not sterile" make for a great juxtaposition of songs.  As always Amanda McBroom’s “The Portrait” (especially on Mother’s Day) brings tears.

David Caldwell is the songwriter of “A Tomb With a View” – “location, location, location…it’s a grave, who cares about the view; being buried between Grimm and Pleasant…has a certain cache, wouldn’t you say!” But as Raissa says as she clears clutter from her life, the universe tells her there’s a place for everything. I guess that includes a place to put oneself in the afterlife!  Remaining songs “At The Fountain” (Hamlisch/Carnelia), “I Have Found” (Finn) and her encore song “We Live on Borrowed Time” (Friedman) complete her musical journey. Nice to hear the unusual rather than the usual in this well thought-out show.

Putting Things Away is directed and co-written with 2008 MAC Award Winner (Best Director) Eric Michael Gillett. Shows remaining at the Metropolitan Room are May 13, 18, 20, 25 and 27^th.

Sandi Durell
Cabaret Scenes
May 11, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org