As you wait to enter one of the two cabaret rooms at Don’t Tell Mama, you can’t help gazing at the posterized tribute to years and shows gone by. Among the cabaret stars represented on what amounts to a Mama Wall of Fame are the late Nancy LaMott, Karen Mason, Sharon McNight, Julie Sheppard and the late Mary Cleere Haran. And over on the far right side of the wall, there’s a poster featuring the face of Rosemary Loar, looking positively 1920s flapperish, and promoting a show from an unspecified year. In fact, none of these posters display the period in which the shows were performed, rendering them retro, current and timeless.

These are also the words that might describe Rosemary Loar today, even though she staged her recent show a couple of decades after her debut at Don’t Tell Mama. Rosemary is not an easily classified cabaret artist. As a Broadway actress with an engaging alto-to-soprano range, she can croon a classic show tune as easily as she can spin some vocalese or put over a contemporary pop song. Loar can produce eclectic interpretations of the Sting songbook as comfortably as she performs her own compositions, whether they are written for her own CD or a potential musical theater piece. And when she delivers a song, stretching out her bare arms that seem to go on forever, she’s more like Rosemary Lure, seductively pulling her audience into her orbit.

When one is relatively new to reviewing cabaret shows (and I promise I will stop mentioning that once I hit my one-year critic’s anniversary), one of the kicks is experiencing “firsts.” Rosemary’s show was the first where the entire show (well, almost) featured the performer singing her own tunes, including pieces from four CDs and two original musicals. Looking sleek and sassy in a thigh-high, sleeveless silver cocktail dress, Rosemary opened with the swinging “Get a Little Distance,” which featured a mid-song scat. After a heartfelt tribute to long-time Mama’s booking manager Sidney Myer, Rosemary did a little “Heart and Soul” (Carmichael/Loesser) riff (into a ballad called “Every Time We Part” from her The Quando Swing CD), which could serve as a metaphor for her songs and the passion she conveys in performing them.

Loar’s lyrics are unsubtle and in your face and she means what she sings. In “Why, Why, Why,” from her first rock musical, Water from the Moon, her character angrily sings about her relationship with God: “Why, why, why did you put me here in the first place...Why, why, why did you put me in last place...I want to tear down the stars...I want to scratch at your face.” In “Let Myself Cry,” from her Alternative Torch CD, she’s “gonna let my heart bleed right on your pretty shirt.” And during “Tears on the Table,” a solid ballad that could be covered by major pop stars (from her Indigo and Iridescent and Alternative Torch disc), Loar sings of a relationship where “there’s nothing stable you can hold onto.”

Not that Loar’s songs are all heart-wrenching angst. She can turn from melancholy to mischievous to mirthful on a dime. In addition to her now obligatory homage to Sting—a jazzy, scat-filled “Everything He Does Is Magic” (based on Sting’s “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”) and “All I Can Do Is Sigh,” an original song with engaging lyrics about almost approaching her musical love at a recording session—she offered the bluesy “Since I Fell for Ice Cream,” a playfully sexy number that she sang as though she was licking the drips off the side of a sugar cone, and “Pedal Dancer,” a song about riding her bicycle, that has a distinctly Manhattan Transfer vocalese vibe.

At different points in the set, Rosemary broke out a number from her new fantasy musical Spoolie Girl, which displayed her affinity for writing catchy and quirky pop/rock/show tunes. (Full disclosure alert: This reviewer is also the Board President of Musical Mondays Theatre Lab, which will be presenting a preview of Spoolie Girl at the Snapple Theatre in November.) Loar generously shared her cabaret show spotlight with her pianist, John DiPinto, who sang lead on the gospel-sounding “Everybody Deserves to Be Saved,” and Alicia Irving, who provided wonderful support vocals on the otherworldly “On My Planet” (music by Jan Folkson) and the fun duet “Bitch to Be Beautiful,” which sounded like a Bob Fosse-esque number right out of Chicago or Pippin. (Alicia also blew the Mama’s audience away taking the lead on “Let Myself Cry,” with Rosemary on piano.)

An energetic stage presence possessing a cheeky sense of humor combined with a performing veteran’s confidence, Rosemary is driven to connect. So, when she takes to the piano and ends her show with the intimate ballad “Let Me Be Your Mirror” (also from Water from the Moon), she seems to transform her own lyric from one about a one-on-one relationship into a comforting promise to her audience: “When the words of hate have cut you deep/I will be the kiss that helps you sleep.” Hopefully, the time until Rosemary next appears at Don’t Tell Mama will just feel like a brief nap.

Stephen Hanks
Cabaret Scenes
July 27, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org