In her return to cabaret, Carolyn Mignini took her audience on a musical trip to the moon and back — lifting it higher and higher with an array of songs provocative, funny and just plain beautiful.

It wasn’t simply the strong song choices that evoked the audience’s emotions — it was the way she combined her exquisite soprano and her acting talent that made the trip so exciting and her performance so effective.

Between her opening number — the haunting “Moonfall” (Rupert Holmes) from The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which segued into her own composition, “Only Moonlight Knows”  — and her closing with the inevitable “Moon River" (Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer), Mignini kept surprising us with an eclectic mix of songs.

One particular highlight that dominated the post-show chatter was “Chase Me Charlie,” a Noël Coward song about a frisky cat, which Mignini sang with a come-hither look in her eye and in her voice that seemed to charm the audience utterly.

Another distinctive selection was Geoffrey Leigh Tozer’s “Neon Lobster,” a cute novelty in which Mignini spun her special magic to effectively deliver a song about … well, a brightly colored crustacean.

Singing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Mr. Snow” gave Mignini the opportunity to combine her singing and acting chops in a tour de force; and she also conveyed her strong acting ability especially well on “Through the Eyes of Grace,” a Melissa Manchester song about love after thirty years years of marriage — a song Mignini said she sang twenty years ago about her parents, “but now it’s us.”

There was also a gentle version of Sting’s “Every Breath You Take,” as sung to her children when they were little; and a lovely rendition of the lovely “On My Way to You” (Alan & Marilyn Bergman and Michel Legrand).

Mignini showed off her full soprano to stunning effect in Rodgers and Hart’s “My Romance” and also in “Ain’t Gonna Let You Break My Heart Again” (David and Julie Lasley); while displaying more bluesy vocals on  Carol Hall’s “Change in Me” and “Carwash Blues,” a song Mignini said she wrote with “a lot of help” from musicians Todd Schroeder and Bill Schneider.

Schneider provided strong, effective piano support throughout the set, allowing the spotlight to shine on Mignini, whose warm, enveloping smile made clear her sheer pleasure in singing for an audience.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
June 19, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org