Wow!

That’s the most succinct way to sum up what it’s like to watch Julie Wilson perform!

There aren’t enough superlatives to describe what this 85-year-old artist can do with a lyric, let alone a dramatic pause… but allow me to try.

Performing “He Was Too Good to Me” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart), Wilson got to the line, “Who’s goin’ to make me gay now?” As she said the word “gay,” she threw her head back as her eyes lit up and her mouth opened wide in a silent squeal of ecstasy; then her expression collapsed with a long pause before the stark truth of the situation dawned on her as she uttered the word “now” with bitterness and disappointment—all in the milliseconds it takes to sing two or three words of a song. In an evening of love songs, Wilson finds moments like that in song after song to make her audience sit back and gasp at the brilliance of her line readings.

She has said she wanted more straight acting roles as a younger woman but kept getting hired for singing roles. Well, Julie Wilson is one of the best actresses on the cabaret stage—a woman who has found a way to replace musicality with a dramatic delivery of songs for which she can no longer quite carry the tune but in which she puts across the pathos and emotion of a lyric like no one else can.

The Rodgers & Hart song was paired with Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” during which Wilson’s voice quivered with emotion, squeezing every dramatic element out of the song to give it a fresh relevance.

Another high-powered medley paired two songs from Pal Joey (Rodgers & Hart)— What Is a Man?” and a bewitching “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” sung with strength and a bit more haughtiness than bewilderment.

Wilson worked her way through more than a dozen songs, solidly supported on piano by Christopher Denny, who also helped out when Wilson went up on a lyric. But in spite of advancing age and the frailties that come with it, Wilson is always gracious, never apologizing for what she can no longer do and doing so much with the talents and abilities she can.

Wilson occasionally acknowledged her age, as in her opening number, “Three Little Words” (Harry Ruby/Bert Kalmar), when she sang “That’s all I’d live for the rest of my days” adding, “See, I’m still an optimist!”

The lady also knows how to have fun—rolling her eyes and her hips on the brilliant “If He Were Straight and I Were Young” (Francesca Blumenthal/Ronny Whyte); tossing out double entendres right and left and using her trademark boa in a variety of ways in Sondheim’s “I Never Do Anything Twice”; and singing about a lady who works her way up and down Wall Street in Eli Bass’ “Sally.”

And if she can make you laugh, then she can certainly make you cry with Blumenthal’s “Lies of Handsome Men,” in which a woman allows herself to be fooled; followed by “Remind Me” (Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields), about a woman in control of her emotions.

Wilson is always in control—of her emotions and yours—during her show.  And what she misses in vocal quality, she more than makes up for in dramatic power and prowess.

The lady in the boa, with the gardenia in her hair, is a national treasure. Long may she wave!

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
January 21, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org