Natalie Joy Johnson holds an audience with the sheer force of her personality. She’s also a belter who keeps the energy of her performance at a very high level, with hardly any letdown. And yet she doesn’t really tire an audience out with the power of her vocals because you sense that sometimes she’s not taking herself too seriously when she’s hitting those big, big notes.

Johnson, currently touring as Paulette, the hair-dresser, in Legally Blonde:The Musical, set the tone for her show right from the start with a big version of “Get Out of This Town” (Hillary Lindsey/Gordie Sampson/Steve McEwan), followed by a sexy rendition of Jace Everett’s “Bad Things,” the theme song from HBO'sTrue Blood.

The high point of Johnson’s performance was her tour-de-force medley about her teenage years, using self-deprecating narration and snippets of songs from Top Gun, Dirty Dancing and other movies of the era to illustrate, mostly in over-the-top fashion, the angst of growing up in the San Fernando Valley.

But she proved capable of lowering the decibels and delivering a sweet ballad — first on “Drinking Again” (Johnny Mercer/Doris Tauber), performed in a straightforward reading with fewer histrionics as part of a medley preceded by a self-mocking rendition of Amy Winehouses’ “I Heard Love Is Blind”; followed later by a soft, very emotive “Here and There,” which built to a smashing finish.

“Here and There” was written by Johnson’s pianist, Our Lady J—a.k.a. Jonnah Speidel— who provided strong support throughout the set and who got a chance to solo on another personal composition, a song about a vengeful lover with a gun, “Pink Prade Purse.” Speidel also got a one-song respite when John Hill joined Johnson on stage to sing a duet of “When You’re Low,” a song she wrote with Micah Schraft about a series of excuses to get high.

She closed the set with a deliberately over-the-top version of “Don’t Cry Out Loud” (Peter Allen/Carole Bayer Sager).

Ben Rimalower was musical director.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
September 7, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org