Luke Grooms holds an audience with the power of his voice and the gentleness of his personality. Adjusting his voice to a cabaret setting, Grooms uses his opera-trained tenor as a baseline from which to let his voice soar to dramatic heights, with a consistently powerful delivery, a variety of emotions and excellent enunciation.

In his Los Angeles cabaret debut, Grooms focused on songs by younger Broadway composers about “emotional junk” — songs that could serve as a reference for singers looking for lyric-driven, content-laden songs with powerful messages.

In performance, his delivery runs the gamut — from an ability to rattle the room with the strength of “Monticello,” a song about leaving home from the revue Edges: A Song Cycle by Benjamin Pasek and Justin Paul; to showing off his sweet, sensitive side in “Part of a Painting” (Pasek and Paul), “Open Road” from Glory (Nick Blaemire) and Jonathan Reid Gealt’s “September of ’92.”

Although he set up the “emotional junk” theme for the evening after his first song, he did not do much more talking (other than naming the composers) between songs until the second half of the show. But he shared very little of who these writers are and what these songs mean to him, which made his show more of a concert than a cabaret performance. But with his strong stage presence and what seems like a gentle soul, the addition of some patter could give Grooms the crux of an inspiring show.

Among the evening’s highlights were a couple of tours de force written by Scot Alan:  “Blessing,” a song about coming out (“I’m still the same person/… I was living this life for someone else/Now I’m living it for myself”); and “Home,” a hymn-like tribute to friendship (“You’ll always have a home inside of me”). Grooms dedicated the latter song to his acting family in the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera, in which he plays Piangi, the principal tenor in the Paris Opera House. Cast mate Santoni Hoffman, who understudies Carlotta, joined him for a soaring duet on “Dispensible” (Pasek and Paul), about the breakup of a relationship.

Showing off his lighter, fun side, Grooms also sang “Sensitive Song” from Cops: The Musical (Larry O’Keefe), which could otherwise be known as the “skanky whore” song; and demonstrated a scarier side with superb acting skills in “I Really, Really Love You,” aka “The Stalker Song” (Scott Burkell/Paul Loesel).

Grooms’ Musical Director was David Robison.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
October 4, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org