MaryJo Mundy stands only 4-foot-7, but what a wallop she packs on stage!

Appearing for the first time at M Bar — a Hollywood supper club that’s specialized in comedy but is morphing into a cabaret — Mundy worked her way through a variety of feelings — from intimate to raucous, sexy to sweet, and girl-next-door to girl-in-charge — in her new show, Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues.

The show opened with accompanist Todd Schroeder reflecting the confusion men have determining “How to Handle a Woman” before Mundy appeared to sing the last verse — tenderly yet powerfully clearing up the confusion.

She used the female-power hook effectively throughout the show, demonstrating her powerful rock-chick persona in Tracy Bonham’s “Behind Every Good Woman (Is a Trail of Men)"; looking back knowingly at a life lived in Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen”; and thirsting for all life has to offer like a demanding child in “I Want It Now” by Leslie Bricusse.

Mundy got down-and-dirty in the show’s title song — Ida Cox’s “Wild Women Don’t Get the Blues” — letting it all hang out, figuratively speaking, but prompting one ringsider to stand up at song’s end and fan her with a napkin to cool down the sexual heat the song generated.  That heat came not only from Mundy but also from a solid guitar solo by Tony Mandracchia, a piano solo by Schroeder (getting the most out of the high notes at the end of the keyboard) and able support from Terry Schonig on drums.

She created her most moving moments during a segment reflecting on the mistakes one makes in life and the passions attached to them — starting with Cy Coleman’s “Moment of Madness,” segueing into a poem by Margaret Atwood entitled “A Siren’s Call,” and concluding with a slow meditation on overcoming despair in “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” by Don Raye and Gene DePaul.

Mundy closed the show with a rousing number from a show headed for Off-Broadway called Unbeatable: A Musical Journey, written by Schroeder and Kevin Fisher about a woman fighting cancer.  The song is “I’m Gonna Live,” a powerful anthem in which she declares she “won't let a moment of life slip away.”

As a performer, MaryJo Mundy doesn’t.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
November 21, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org