The name of the game was re-interpretation, and that's what Adam Pascal brought to Feinstein's at Loews Regency with his turbo-charged synthesis of rock, pop and musical theater. The energy was especially high since Pascal was celebrating his 38th birthday and on hand was a generous assortment of his schoolmates from Syosset High School on Long Island. Pascal connected the rock metal sound he liked when he was younger with the character-driven musical theater that he later embraced. He added his guitar to the piano accompaniment with musical director Larry Edoff. A lot of bang for the buck in this rock concert squeezed into a posh boite.

Maybe you left with a headache but you can't dispute that his cabaret show was nowhere near the same ol' same ol'. It was imaginative and musically creative, which worked for some songs and not for others. Pascal's audience this night, however, was enthusastic and loved every pop sob, every raspy scream. Admittedly, there was surreptitious texting going on and a lot of phone photos, but Pascal delivered a robust performance. He proved to be an affable guy with good-natured patter, shushing some incessant whisperers and amiably scolding a couple of audience members tiptoeing in and out.

The problem is that screaming full-volume, mouth to the microphone in an intimate room is deafening. It also muffles the clarity of the lyrics. Pascal is a trained theater and concert singer (Aida and Chess), a film actor (School of Rock), a recording artist (Blinding Light). He proved he can sing effectively with clear diction, thought and understanding with the pungent ballad, "I Don't Care Much," (Kander and Ebb) which he paired with "Rocket Man" (Elton John). The unlikely mating of these two songs actually worked to elevate the despair of submission to loss of love, and loneliness. Consider the desolation in both Kander and Ebb's "So if you kiss me/ If we touch/Warning's fair/I don't care very much" followed by Elton John's "And I think it's gonna be a long, long time/ till touch down brings me 'round again to find/ I'm not the man they think I am at home."

Some of Larry Edoff's piano riffs were repetitive, but the waltz-time fusion of jazz, pop, theatrer and rock in "Maria" (Sondheim) was intriguing with Edoff's dark chords giving the song an ominous dimension. Also imaginative was Pascal and Edeoff's guitar/piano instrumentation in "One Song Glory" (Rent), with its message that time flies and then time dies.

I look forward to hearing these two musicians evoke deeper emotion in a future cabaret show, and leave the challenge of the decibles to a concert stage.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
October 27, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org