You have to admire any cabaret performer who dares to take risks, whether it’s in the selection of a set, the interpretation of a song, or both. But that risky musical journey must also be guided by a keen self-awareness of personality and voice; even when pushing the performing envelope, the material must still be a good fit.

For Marissa Mulder, a relative newcomer to the New York cabaret scene, taking on the songbook of composer Jimmy Van Heusen was an intriguing, going-out-on-a-limb choice of material. The idea came from her director Karen Oberlin, a MAC Award- and Nightlife Award-winning cabaret performer, and Oberlin’s husband, the acclaimed New Republic music critic David Hajdu. And with Musical Director Bill Zeffiro, a pianist who was born to play the swinging melodies Van Heusen wrote in the 1940s and ’50s (mainly for Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra), Mulder was equipped with a solid support system. But she just couldn’t pull it off.

An adorable young woman with curly red hair and a bubbly stage persona, Mulder has a sweet and breathy alto that just isn’t strong enough for many of the songs Van Heusen wrote for mainly masculine voices. He did write for female voices, as he did Dolores Grey, who sang “Here’s That Rainy Day” in the short-lived 1953 musical Carnival in Flanders (and winning a Tony Award)—it was usually Ella or Lena or Peggy Lee or Rosemary Clooney—powerful voices with personality who brought reservoirs of emotion to those Johnny Burke and Sammy Cahn lyrics.

From the very beginning of the show with the Sinatra-recorded “Ring-a-Ding Ding” (Cahn) and the Crosby-recorded “Swinging on a Star” (Burke, not a great cabaret tune, by the way), one could sense that Marissa was game but miscast. She did a nice job on the lovely “Polka Dots and Moonbeams,” but even that called out for a richer, more evocative interpretation. On many songs with phrases in the lower part of her register, like in “Come Fly with Me” (Cahn), her voice couldn’t sustain the notes, which detracted from the power of the lyrics. One of her best efforts was on the lush ballad “Sunday, Monday, or Always” (Burke), but Marissa didn’t bring enough emotional range to the lyrics that could distinguish one song from the next.

The between-songs script was basically a chronological Wikipedia-ized telling of Van Heusen’s career (his real name was Edward Chester Babcock) and manly interests (he was a pilot who was charismatic around the ladies and one of Sinatra’s best buds), but didn’t provide much insight into what drove Van Heusen’s particular melodic style. It was fun to learn, however, that he wrote the music for 23 Crosby films and six out of the seven Road pictures Bing did with Bob Hope. It provided a nice segue into her fun duet with Zeffiro on “Road to Morocco.”

Zeffiro and drummer Rex Benincasa later sat it out on Mulder’s unplugged version of “All the Way” (Cahn), one of the four songs which won Van Heusen an Academy Award (in the film The Joker Is Wild). With just bass player Jeff Morrow accompanying, Marissa added a nice touch of melancholy to a song about bringing passion to love. It would have been interesting to hear her on “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and “Love and Marriage,” two songs that would have fit her sunny personality and vocal wheelhouse, but for some reason they didn’t make the cut.

With all the show’s faults, Marissa still showed glimpses that she could be a strong and compelling cabaret performer. It’s all about the material.

Stephen Hanks
Cabaret Scenes
June 8, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org