Without ceremony, Barbara Cook took the stage at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room Tuesday evening.  The performance, originally scheduled for last month, was cancelled on account of Cook’s ill health. “I was in bed for two months…and it’s a hell of a lot better up here!” she declared, before launching into Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “A Wonderful Guy.” It all seemed to say, ‘I’m here; you’re here; the band’s here. Let’s have a ball!’

Ms. Cook’s delivery of a song is influenced more than ever by the work of Mabel Mercer.  In homage to the Empress of Cabaret, Cook released Wilder and Eager’s neglected “Goodbye John” with crystalline frankness, and bathed the room in magic.  In true Mercerian fashion, she also drew out the N in “Wonnnnderful,” and shaped the final lyric of Berlin’s “I Got Lost in His Arms” into an idiosyncratic proclamation: “Look what I’ve found!” We knew exactly.

Unlike Mabel Mercer, Cook has a bluesy, groovy setting on her vocal dashboard. Songs like Gershwin and Caesar’s “Nashville Nightingale” got an irresistible new lease on life, and Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah, I Love Him (Her) So” set even sophisticated toes tapping. In spite of these divinely accessible qualities, however, Miss Cook clings to ponderous songs, like Sondheim’s “No One is Alone,” which distract her audience and bring results unworthy of her talent.

Nevertheless, Cook is among the very few performers who can outshine the Central Park skyline outside the Allen Room, which, incidentally, recalls the Starship Enterprise. If we were all stranded in space, and had one evening to remind us what earth and humanity were all about, Barbara Cook would have to be beamed aboard. 

Patrick Monahan
Cabaret Scenes
February 16, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org