If the essence of cabaret is an intimate connection between a singer and the audience, then Todd Murray has the art form mastered. Despite the elaborate use of three musicians and two backup female singers, Murray managed to transform the Metropolitan Room from showplace to casual lounge, where he sang the songs he favored, mainly standards such as “Stardust” and “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” with a composition of his own, “Sing Low” (an ode to his own bass baritone voice), and new songs such as “Time” by Richard Thalkin, with lyrics by Barry Kleinbort. Stardust and Swing is closely tied to Murray’s CD of the same name, and his choice of songs was determined by whether they made him feel good. Clearly he wished to communicate that good feeling to his listeners.

Murray’s patter was really conversation with his audience, some of it tongue-in-cheek, eliciting laughs from the room, as, for example, he compared new love and passionate love to long-term “ball and chain” love as he introduced the song “It’s the Little Things.” In many ways, this conservative show was quite daring, because Murray did nothing to obscure the tradition of the male crooner smoothly delivering familiar songs in a comfortably familiar fashion. There were no gimmicks, no tricks, no seemingly scripted verbal interludes between songs. No obvious straining for originality. Murray even seemed at times to be asking his audience not to take him too seriously. If anything, the show was sometimes too casual, too easy-going, so that it was possible that one might get restless and wish for a little dynamism in the act. And just at that point, Murray delivered his final number, a rollicking version of “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” a song written in 1939, introduced and recorded by the then little-known singer Dinah Shore, and enormously popular in the '40s.

Murray was accompanied by pianist and whistler Alex Rybeck, with Steve Doyle on bass, and Dan Gross on drums. Michael Barbieri did his usually adept work with lights and sound.

Barbara Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
November 3, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org