Hailing from Oklahoma, which seems to be a breeding ground for musical theater and cabaret stars, Kelli O’Hara is a Broadway and concert performer who has achieved stardom in such roles as Clara in The Light in the Piazza and Nellie Forbush in the long-running Lincoln Center production of South Pacific. Making her Feinstein’s debut, O’Hara was a treat for the eyes and for the ear.  She was beautiful and evoked images of homecoming queens and sorority presidents.  Her soprano voice was nothing less than stunning.  Exuding enormous charm, she was also capable of rollicking humor, as in the song, written for her by Dan Lipton, O’Hara’s Musical Director, about a frustrated country singer who is barred from opera, unable to let her operatic voice rip until she suffers agonizing labor pains while giving birth.

With all of this, O’Hara’s show should have been better than it was, and once again a Broadway star evidences difficulty in making the transition to cabaret, in which, arguably, affecting one’s audience is as important as wowing it. The basic and very loose premise of the show, its seemingly unifying principle, had to do with getting beyond the ingénue persona.  In fact, O’Hara rarely did.  Her songs were for the most part taken from shows she has performed and starred in, such as “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady.  In fact, she seemed almost disconcerted to admit that her closing songs were still ingenue songs from ingenue roles she has played. Her patter about those roles seemed to be an awkwardly constant reminder to her audience that she has made it big, including her thanks to something out there in the universe that helped her get these parts.

What would make her get beyond the ingenue image? She indicated that it might be singing songs usually performed by men, such as “All the Way,” made famous by Frank Sinatra.  But there is nothing essentially masculine about that song, nothing like, for example, Eric Michael Gillett’s perhaps controversial decision some years ago to sing Craig Carnelia’s “Just a Housewife.” And once again, O’Hara brought us back to her own achievements, telling us that when she recorded the song, it didn’t require more than one take.  Even Sondheim’s “Finishing the Hat” from Sunday in the Park with George is not essentially a man’s song: a female artist as well as Seurat might struggle to bring inspiration to aesthetic fulfillment.  “This Nearly Was Mine” is a man’s song because her audience is almost certain to know its context in South Pacific. But anyone in O’Hara’s audience who also knew the less renowned song “Almost” (by Joe Iconis and Robert Maddock), sung by Lorinda Lisitza, would also know that women as well as men can lament what came close to bestowing happiness, only to disappear. O’Hara also sang a song by Fred Hellerman (of Weavers fame) written for his baby son, “Tomorrow Lies in the Cradle” and O’Hara sang it about hers, claiming that one cannot have a baby and remain an ingenue (this reviewer, having had her first child before she was nineteen years old, could retort, oh yes you can!).

What would validate O’Hara’s theme, getting beyond the ingenue.  Well, for one, she might pick a more sophisticated dress (although she looks gorgeous in what she wears and will evoke the envy of any very young woman—and older ones too!).  Then she would have to find a director who would help her create patter that has some depth, that could use her songs and her incredible talent to trace the path from immaturity to a maturity based on a growth that perhaps requires some pain.  No one who saw O’Hara play Clara in The Light in the Piazza will forget the young woman who, because of a tragic accident, is an eternal ingenue, mentally fixed at an age of early adolescence. But the character they will be haunted by is Margaret, Clara’s mother, who has terrible choices to make about her daughter’s life and knows it takes more than giving birth to get beyond the ingenue.  It is significant that Kelli O’Hara chose to sing in this show Laura’s song of yearning rather than the mother’s anguished cry, perhaps the highlight of the show.

Barbara Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
October 19, 2010
www.cabaretscenes.org