Lainie Kazan is exquisite.

When she sings an up-tempo song in her jazzy style, she is sultry and smooth; when she sings a ballad, she is powerful and totally in control, making each contemplative song completely her own.

Listening to her takes on “The Man That Got Away” (Ira Gershwin/Harold Arlen), with its strong last note, and “The Music That Makes Me Dance” (Bob Merrill/Jule Styne) is like taking a master class in how to deliver a torch song.

Other effective moments in an evening of them came with Kazan’s versions of “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” (Bob Hilliard/David Mann)—sung tenderly, with a nice, gentle feel for the lyrics—and “Song for Old Lovers,” a Jacques Brel song spun out slowly and earnestly in a translation written especially for her, she said, by Theodore Bikel (“Somehow we’re supposed to forget/And live our age without regret/Leaving behind our adolescence”).

It wasn’t all serious, however, as Kazan threw out a few Mae West one-liners (sample:  “I’m the girl who works at Paramount all day and Fox all night!”) as a lead-in to “Peel Me a Grape” (David Frischberg). She saluted Sophie Tucker with the requisite “Some of These Days” (Shelton Brooks, with an assist from Tucker, Kazan noted) and the slyly hilarious “I’m Living Alone and I Like It” (Jack Yellen/Dan Dougherty).

Kazan also talked about her experience with the Cy Coleman/Dorothy Fields musical Seesaw and how she was fired out of town and replaced by Michele Lee, then—following the story with a medley of songs from the show—only to be joined from the audience and then onstage by Lee herself , a repeat of the “once-in-a-lifetime” moment in Kazan’s show a year earlier at the same venue.

(Lee told Cabaret Scenes that, no, she doesn’t follow Kazan all over the country to re-create the moment, but does it when she and Kazan are in the same city and she’s invited to participate.)

Kazan was in good spirits throughout the evening as she told the story of her life illustrated by songs. While her voice is absolutely solid on the ballads, it has a tendency to be unsteady moving from high to low and back again in some up-tempo numbers — a small caveat for a performer with her talent to captivate.

She was strongly backed by regulars Bob Kaye on piano and Eddie Caccavale on drums and, for this engagement, by Kristin Korb on bass, all of whom provided excellent support.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
November 19, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org