It isn’t an easy task, but Alix Paige pulled it off: creating an enjoyable cabaret show that’s totally autobiographical, at least nominally.  The song selections revolved about Paige and her life, from fourteen years old when her mother gave her a motherly guide to finding the right mate: “Date as many different men as physically possible,” and the show took it from there.

Admittedly, it all wasn’t nearly as narcissistic as it sounds, because “love, lust and loss” are as universal a leitmotif as one could get, and Alix’s segues between numbers made it clear that these were songs from the heart, sometimes beating with the love and lust part of her show’s title, but too often broken. Still, she was no Edith Piaf.  She gave highly charged renditions of “Them There Eyes,” delivered with an energy that the songwriters of the 1930 piece (Picker, Tracey and Tauber) would have relished and, following the tale of a blind date with a man who had it all, but only on paper, an equally spirited “Find Me a Primitive Man” (Cole Porter).

One didn’t need to know Alix Paige’s bio to determine that she was an accomplished actress as well as an engaging singer.  With her mobile face, connotative body language and a clear “I’ve been there” understanding of the lyrics, she rates an “A” in communicating the full force of her songs to the audience.

That audience joined her on an emotional roller coaster, up and then down, and up, then down again.  Perhaps because perceiving the vocalist’s current state of acceptance that it’s all a road headed in the right direction, just as her mother told her, her effective songs of regret – “Say It Isn’t So,” “Time Heals Everything” and others – were greeted by her mostly young adult audience with much appreciation rather than despair.

Her musical accompaniment was the Bennett Paster trio: Paster on piano, Gregory Ryan on bass and Joe Strasser on drums. All were well chosen.  After an easy-listening instrumental opener, they provided Paige with cogent backing, pleasing and appropriate without ever forgetting it was her show.  David Colbert was the capable hand on lights and sound.

This was Alix Paige’s New York cabaret debut.  She’s good. And when she understands that in cabaret’s intimate rooms, a vocalist doesn’t need peaks of volume to indicate peaks of emotion, she’ll be even better. Hopefully, cabaret lovers will have the opportunity to see more of her.

Alix return to the Metropolitan Room Nov. 8.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
August 26, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org