No one can accuse Daryl Glenn of staying in a rut. He performs regularly in the Nashville show at the Metropolitan Room, and recently galloped uptown to Feinstein's to salute his idol, Stephen Sondheim. On the one hand, the country twang of "It Don't Worry Me" and on the other hand, "Giants in the Sky." Two extremes, but Daryl Glenn made them both relevant, perhaps referencing a line in the latter song, "...you wish that you could live in between."

Glenn is convincing in his admiration of both the down-home Nashville sound and the complex plot-related songs of Sondheim. There is basic truth in both genres: the simplicity of country tunes and the essence of Sondheim's characters apparent in his songs, sometimes even in one line of a song. The clarity of obsessive love in "Loving You" (Passion) is stunning: "Loving you is not a choice/It's who I am."

With his affable personality with strong audience communication, he opened the show with a sober rendition of "Everybody’s Got the Right" (..."to their dreams") from Assassins. With that idea in mind, Glenn took the risk of removing these musical theater songs from their books and presenting them as individual cabaret songs. Not always easy, and while he set up a song with comments about the plot, there was the expectation that most of his audience was familiar with the Sondheim canon. Some songs were fairly familiar, like the haunting "I Remember" from television's Evening Primrose. The relevancy in "More," from the film Dick Tracy is obvious: a razzle-dazzle celebration of greed.

At the end of the show, he repeated a snippet of "Everybody’s Got the Right" and, thankfully, no raised machine guns here, as at the end of the play. Glenn is supported by Karen Dryer on piano, Ivan Bodley on bass, Dan Gross on drums, Sean Harkness on guitar and backup vocals by Halle Petro and Brad Wills.

You will hear prettier voices singing the songs of Stephen Sondheim, but you won't hear many with the heart and sensitivity of Daryl Glenn, and that is the essence of songs like "Not While I'm Around."

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
January 17, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org