Go to YouTube, punch in “perfect cabaret show” and a video of Pat Whiteman’s latest endeavor will come up. And if it doesn’t, it should.

Whiteman is a powerful, evocative singer with enough acting chops to convey a range of varied emotions in any song, and most of the songs she chose — super-charged lyrical ballads and up-tempo numbers — required the kind of confidence and strong delivery she gave them.

There was the delicate, operetta-like sweetness of “Kind of Woman” (Stephen Schwartz) from Pippin, the variety of characters she portrayed in a little gem of a song called  “Compromise” (Zina Goldrich/Marcy Heisler) and the sweet aspirations of “Little Girls’ Dreams” (Karen Gottlieb/Michelle Brourman).

With Brourman serving as Whiteman’s accompanist, one of the evening’s highlights was another Brourman composition, “Consolation Prize” (“I get the song/She gets the man”) — a hot, down-and-dirty blues number that could have been written for Bessie Smith in another era. Whiteman really threw herself into the song and belted it right out of the club! She was also outstanding on another blues number — “Another Mister Right Left" (David Zippel/Jonathan Sheffer) — which ended with a clever musical tag by Brourman: a few notes from “The Man That Got Away.”

Whiteman showed her softer side on the sublime “And I Was Beautiful” (Jerry Herman) from Dear World, sung as a medley with “Gorgeous” (Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick), whose pace was slowed down and delivered as a thoughtful reverie rather than its usual performance as a comic piece. There was a bit of Elvis tossed in with a slowed-down version of “All Shook Up” (written with Otis Blackwell) and some Jason Robert Brown in “Mr. Hopalong Heartbreak” — a honky-tonk reflection by a woman who’s been hurt but not defeated by love (“Watch this butt/ Because I’m not coming back!”).

Resolving the question of whether or not to exit the stage before doing an encore, Whiteman closed the show with a medley that combined “Hold Out for the Real Thing” (Brourman with Karen Gottlieb) with Brenda Russell’s “Get Here,” which she sang as she exited the room, making logical her return for an encore — a tiny comedy song called “Teeny Tiny Lady" (Marshall Barer/David Ross) and the always touching “The Nearness of You” (Hoagy Carmichael/Ned Washington).

Whiteman’s show was shaped by Jason Graae as director — the first time the versatile performer has directed a cabaret act.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
May 8, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org