It’s rare when a singer steps back and lets a song take center stage. It’s rarer when the song and its mood float sweetly across the room to find their home within each listener. Lauren Fox succeeded in making it all work in her New York cabaret debut, Here’s to Love, at the Metropolitan Room. Tall, slim and striking, with a gentle vibrato, Lauren proved to be, quietly and refreshingly, a winner.

Already a stage and film actress, Lauren equipped herself for cabaret with two strong assets: a program of quality songs and her accompanist and musical partner, Jon Weber. Her numbers ranged from the familiar to the not-so. Included were Rodgers and Hart’s “With a Song in My Heart,” Berlin’s “It Only Happens When I Dance with You,” Van Heusen and Burke’s “But Beautiful,” Malneck & Parish’s “Starlit Hour” (incorporating a fine piano solo by Weber), and the motion picture hit, “Hi-Lili, Hi-Lo.” Less familiar were two pieces by Dan Messe: “My Father’s Waltz” and “Great Houses of New York.”

Note that they were all ballads, which produced some attention-wandering in the audience – fixable next time with more varied programming. The pace revived with a light mid-show duet by Lauren and Jon, seated side by side at the piano, performing Loesser’s “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.: And it was a ballad that provided a moving, personal finale: Lauren singing the show’s title song with music by Hod David and lyrics by her father, screenwriter Ray Erroll Fox.

Peter Haas
Cabaret Scenes
February 7, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org