Baby Jane closed her new show, If, at the Metropolitan Room with “Everybody Hurts,” the same song that closed the 2008 Mabel Mercer Cabaret Convention.  In this encore, Baby Jane revealed the power that has made her one of cabaret’s living legends, powerfully expressing strong, dark emotions such as pain, anger, and defiance, but also the resilience expressed through the lyrics, “hang on.”  It was, again, a Baby Jane cabaret fans love, who expresses the dark despair but determination to prevail everyone experiences at time. But it was not, surprisingly, the Baby Jane of If.

It was another Baby Jane who came on stage in If: slimmer, elegantly dressed, self-assured, and in control.  Few of the songs were separated by patter, and the patter was kept short and amusing, and closely connected to the show’s theme.  Singing in “What If” about not wanting to spend every day of her life asking about what might have been, she recounted the day she threw away a lottery ticket before she knew if she had won or lost. The songs were for the most part divided between those that affirmed she was “Moving Forward,” or looking for “a little time, to follow that line” (“Side of the Road”); and those that were about yearning, about being settled, part of an “Ordinary Couple” (Rodgers and Hammerstein), and about “The Long Road Home.”

But even when Baby Jane sang about failed love, she created a persona who was in control, not struggling to hold herself together.  In “Why Did I Choose You,” she reaffirms “I would still choose you.”  She is at times the Baby Jane who expresses defiance, but this time it is a self-confident defiance (“They Can’t Take That Away From Me”) instead of a hurt, self-protective defiance.

Baby Jane was accompanied on piano by Ross Patterson, who did the arrangements, with a particularly unusual, jazz rendition of “Spinning Wheel.”  Boots Maleson played guitar.  J. P. Perreaux was on lights and sound.

Baby Jane will do her show through Saturday November 15; 20 through 22; and 28 and 29^th.  All shows at 7:30 pm.

Barbara Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
November 12, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org