It takes more than a good voice, good songs and an appealing personality to make a cabaret show. To keep an audience interested, it takes structure, a thread no matter how thin, a reason to stay with the performer from song to song. It was that flow to the show that was absent in the otherwise pleasant cabaret debut of Aaron Lazar, singing in the Lauri Beechman Theatre’s series, Voices from the Great White Way, one-night-only concerts by Broadway performers. Star of Light in the Piazza, Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities, Aaron sang with fine voice and dramatic expression on such numbers as “Younger Than Springtime,” “If I Loved You” and “Take Me to the World,” all with excellent piano accompaniment by Andy Einhorn. His lengthy patter, however, meandered as he told his life’s story: how, as a youth, he planned to be an orthodontist; joined his high school drama group to be with girls (and enjoyed his first French kiss); caught the theater bug; fell in love and married; went on to auditions, then to understudy roles (Phantom, Oklahoma, Scarlet Pimpernel), and finally to show biz success. Greeting audience members after his program, he admitted that this was his cabaret “toe in the water,” and that he hopes to develop it into a better production. It’s a good bet, with his winning personality, fine voice, and now with his first outing, that he will. 

Peter Haas
Cabaret Scenes
April 6, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org