Margie Seides’s show A Fine Line straddles the cabaret and the comedy club.  A licensed therapist, Seides uses the cabaret format to explore everyday psychoses in songs and jokes.

She has a special talent for contemporary patter songs that feature a barrage of words.  The Judith Viorst / Shelly Markham masterpiece, “So My Husband and I Decided to Take a Car Trip Through New England,” became a finely balanced interior and exterior monologue about the quotidian tensions in a long-term relationship.  Babbie Greene’s "I Wish" and Amanda McBroom’s “Round” received suitably sardonic treatment.

Seides has been adding more tender moments to her show to great effect.  Babbie Greene’s “Two Homes” was an empathetic portrayal of a child coping with her parents’ divorce and “Count Your Blessings” provided a wistfully optimistic conclusion.  Music director Paul Trueblood not only provided terrific arrangements but served as a deadpan foil for many of Seides’s bits.

In the show I saw, Seides gave a particularly valiant performance. Although her earlier show was well-sold, when I saw it there were less than a score in attendance.  And more than half were a group from Spain with dicey English that just happened to drop into Blues Alley.  It is always hard to do comedy that wants to be uproarious for a small house.  However, Seides never gave up on her performance and had the Spaniards, and the rest of us, enthused.

Michael Miyazaki
Cabaret Scenes
October 14, 2008
www.cabaretscenes.org