Here’s a conundrum.  Take a engaging performer with an outgoing personality and a pleasing voice, have a talented musical director create compelling arrangements, assemble a band and backup singers that sound is if they’ve been making music together forever, and give them a show at one of New York’s best cabaret rooms.  Could anything have a better potential for a knockout show than that?

Gretchen Reinhagen engages her audience with cheerful pleasure, a feeling obviously shared by those for whom she performs.  Musical Director Tracy Stark is not only a fine accompanist, but a capable songwriter who’s “Lottery of Lovers” was one of the show’s highlights.  Reinhagen’s backup singers, Karen Mack and Heidi Weymueller, added just the right touch to many of the songs.  And Lisa Brigantino on the electric bass, with Donna Kelly on drums, maintained the jazz-based rhythmic beat that underlay most every number.

All of the above notwithstanding, for one remediable reason, the whole was less than the sum of its parts. The show got off to an enjoyably boisterous start, as several members of the all-woman ensemble chimed in with their own personalized contributions to “I’m a Woman.”  But throughout the show in the intimate surroundings of the cabaret venue, the band only occasionally toned down its enthusiasm and became true accompanists.  More often, the volume of the sound they generated overwhelmed any clear sense of Reinhagen’s vocal abilities and, for that matter, the lyrics she was singing.  We got a chance to appreciate Reinhagen’s well-controlled voice and how good things could be in the band’s more tempered support of her moving rendition of “”If I Should Lose My Way,” and again when she encored with Tom Waits' and Kathleen Brennan’s lovely  “Take It With Me.”

Perhaps it’s the influence – and obvious success – of many rock concerts that convinces younger performers that when entertaining the more decibels the better. On that level, they were a swinging, driving group that left little to be desired.  Certainly, it was clear that many in the room relished the continued and heavily rhythmic amplified sound.  Not all, however.  One well-thought-of jazz vocalist left her seat to move away from the stage.  And another later admitted that the only way she was able to catch the lyrics was because she was sitting in the first row, directly in front of Reinhagen.

There is another possibility.  The show’s director, Barry Kleinbort, was in Paris with another show.  A shame, because what was most needed was an authoritative voice to tell the band, “Hey, guys, this is good stuff.  Tone it down, so the people can appreciate what you’ve got here, and appreciate what Gretchen’s got to offer.”

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
June 4, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org