In After All of This: The Music of Susan Werner, Mark Fernandez, Meredith Freyre, Alma Mendoza (pictured), Beckie Menzie and Duncan Moore salute the now Chicago-based singer/songwriter, sometimes capturing the essence of Werner and sometimes not.  Werner is foremost a world-class storyteller and over-singing her songs is dangerous.  Freyre has glorious power chops, but would land the self-effacing, witty “Movie of My Life” better by singing less and layering more. Clean diction is important in “Don’t Work with Your Friends”(It sounded like “don’t worry your friends”). Fernandez sings beautifully in “Let’s Regret This in Advance,” but needs to go deeper to find the witty tension of this song—yes, the affair will happen, but there will be consequences—we want all those elements.

That said, there were memorable moments in the show: Moore delivers “Mountains” with edge and wit and captures its quirky rhythm. The song was written for a project (that never happened) in which composers were assigned to write a song about one chapter in the compelling novel Einstein’s Dreams. In “this chapter, folks blindly choose the highest elevations believing that time moves more slowly the higher the altitude.” Moore gets its absurdity. In her best performance this reviewer has seen, Mendoza quietly sings “Sunday Mornings” the way Werner intended—reporting the prosaic to ultimately reveal its power to make us feel.

Carla Gordon
Cabaret Scenes
March 17, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org