Marilyn Monroe once told an interviewer, “I won’t be satisfied until people want to hear me sing without looking at me.” Adding, “Of course, that doesn’t mean I want them to stop looking.” The ultimate cinema goddess, shimmering with lush glamour and charisma, Monroe was never fully appreciated for her acting and comedic skills, and even less so as a singer.  Yet, in her films, she was given some solid songs to sing and she delivered them with a warm vibrato, often accompanied with a snap of wit and occasionally with pathos.

In her current show, Rebecca Kilgore recalls some of Monroe’s memorable musical moments. Interestingly, Kilgore’s light voice possesses a vibrato reminiscent of Monroe’s; however, she is not imitating either Monroe or the characters in the films.  She concentrates on the music with her own jazz take, impeccable phrasing, stresses and a keen understanding of the lyrics.

Some of her finest selections were from Some Like It Hot, where Monroe joined a 1920s-style jazz band, playing her ukulele and singing a snappy “Running Wild” (A. Harrington Gibbs/Joe Grey/Leo Wood).  In Kilgore’s show, for this song there is no ukulele and there was no singer.  Here ierenstead was an instrumental rendition with the Harry Allen Quartet on high-heat with explosive turns by arryAllen on tenor sax, fiery finger work by Rossano Sportiello on piano, plus the intrepid bassist Joel Forbes and drummer Chuck Riggs.  Kilgore contributed a different mood with the rueful “I’m Through With Love” by Matty Malneck and I.A.I. Diamond and, with a touch of coyness “I Wanna Be Loved by You” (Bert Kalmar/Herbert Stothart/Harry Ruby) with a sax caress by Harry Allen.

One song Monroe recorded, though it was never included in a film was “She Acts Like a Woman Should.”  Listening to it, one wonders what Monroe thought about that song, written by Jim Scott.

Also enjoyable were Kilgore and the quartet’s renditions of Jule Styne and Leo Robin’s “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” and “Bye Bye Baby” from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.  She included the lovely “Incurably Romantic” (Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn) and, in closing, Kilgore acknowledged the legacy of the complex actress with Alan Broadbent and Dave Frishberg’s “Marilyn Monroe.”

Rebecca Kilgore has one more show, August 13.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
August 9, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org