Known for her ferocious R&B voice and roles in the off-Broadway revival of Godspell, Broadway's Hairspray and, more recently, as Elphaba in Wicked, Shoshana Bean has developed a cult following of fans, and rightly so.  She’s a talented girl I first reviewed when she was starring in Hairspray and did a show down at The Duplex. It was clear then, as it is now, that she’s a stellar talent with an amazing voice. That she’s also beautiful, funny and possesses enormous stage presence is just icing on the cake.  However, as we all know, even the sweetest icing needs to be spread judiciously for a dessert to be a success.

In her recent one-night benefit performance for Hadassah, produced by Chris Isaacson and Shane Scheel in association with Tom Smedes Productions, Siobhan O’Neill and Upright Cabaret at Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Bean appeared to be tempting fate (not to mention Streisand fans) in titling her show, Shoshana Bean: A Happening with the subtitle, Shoshana Sings Streisand and Songs from Her Debut Album Superheo. Naturally, conjuring up the legendary A Happening in Central Park concert by Barbra Streisand (which took place on June 17, 1967, and was aired as Streisand’s fourth television special on September 15, 1968) is a risky venture that inevitably invites comparison to the diva-goddess herself.  It certainly shows chutzpah but also hubris which, ironically, are perhaps the two adjectives which best describe Streisand herself: a singer who has defined and influenced several generations of singers, both women and not a few men!

The first act of Shoshana Bean: A Happening focused exclusively on the repertoire of Streisand and was far more successful than the pop-driven second act.  Dressed in a beautiful gown by Ashton Michael (an homage to the dress Streisand wore when she sang “People” in Funny Girl) with her hair swept up, Bean looked ravishing and tore into a set of songs including “On a Clear Day…” and “Down with Love” that set the audience into a frenzied reception worthy of concerts of old where stars sang and their fans worshipped adoringly. Meticulously utilizing and recreating Peter Matz’s spectacular, original arrangements (which were shockingly un-credited anywhere), Bean delivered a brilliantly enunciated “The Minute Waltz,” sang “You’ll Never Know” to her puppy (which made a delightful on-stage appearance that almost upstaged Bean herself) and cooed Streisand’s first signature song, “Cry Me a River,” with a jazz inflection that oozed sexiness and anger in equal portions.

To be sure, Bean has an amazing voice but, if you’re got the moxie to sing Streisand, you’d better be prepared to be compared to Streisand, fair or unfair as that may seem.  Overlooking the occasional sound balance problems (the band, led by musical director James Sampliner, often covered Bean’s voice), her phrasing is consistently less than ideal, and certainly not in the same league as Streisand’s phrasing which is legendary.  Bean tended to take breaths in the middle of sentences and before the last word of a phrase, which is the antithesis of great lyric interpretation.  Streisand approached a song like a three-act play, acting out the lyrical intent for all its worth, while Bean merely performs the surface of the words.  Additionally, Streisand had one of those once-in-a-lifetime voices that deepened and bloomed as she went up the scale, making a first-octave C or D sound a fourth or fifth higher than it actually was.  As Bean moves up the scale, her breath support diminishes slightly and her tone thins out a bit—a problem which could easily be corrected with a good vocal coach.

The less said about the second act the better.  Both of Bean’s costumes (a red-satin, breakaway, mini-dress and a tight lavender gown with chunky jewelry for the encore) were ill-fitting and extremely unflattering.  And we won’t speak of the wig that made her look like a prostitute.  But perhaps that was the look she was going for with the set of pop songs from her album Superhero, all of which paled in comparison to the great American Songbook material that had come before.  True, there was a very nice version of “The Way We Were” and she encored with “My Man.”  But those couldn’t undo the messy medleys of Streisand’s hits that appeared in both acts and did nothing for either the original star’s legacy or her acolyte.

The evening was smoothly directed by performer Billy Porter, but directors have only so much control over performers when they’re actually on-stage, in-the-moment and it’s here where Bean needs the most improvement as an artist.  In short, she’s not disciplined in terms of her patter and it will be her undoing if she wants to move up into the ranks of concert performing artists like Audra McDonald, Christine Ebersole or Liz Callaway.  As every cabaret performer knows, the biggest challenge in a show is to make your patter sound effortless, off-the cuff and completely unscripted when, of course, every word has been planned out in advance.  Several times, Bean would start a story, ramble almost incoherently, and then never finish the story.  You can do that at The Duplex when you’re a neophyte, but not when you’re making your New York concert debut at Jazz at Lincoln Center and asking to be taken seriously.

In conclusion, Shoshana Bean is a beautiful, talented, exciting performer for whom big things lie in store if she gets back to basics.  She has a sensational voice but the problem at the moment is – she knows it.  I’ll look forward to what she does next and I’ll be rooting for her every step of the way.

David Hurst
Cabaret Scenes
November 30, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org