Alan Cumming is a strong entertainer. There was as much spoken storytelling in I Bought a Blue Car Today as singing. Sometimes the stories were more entertaining than the songs. One about movie star Ann Miller’s salty language was a hoot. An-other led into an edgy, but difficult to hear, medley from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Cumming’s best song interpretation was “Taylor, the Latte Boy” (acquiring fresh dimension sung by a man) in which brash, forty-something Cumming found the näiveté in the lyric. Tom Baxter’s “Almost There” was poignant and beautiful. The pairing of “I Still Have That Girl” and “I Must Be Losing My Mind” was moving. While Cumming garnered rave reviews as The Emcee in Sam Mendes’s revival of Cabaret, his selection from that show was a biting “Mein Herr,” sung by Liza Minnelli in the film version and added to that revival.

But when perhaps forty percent of his show was unintelligible, there’s a big problem. At whom should the finger be wagged? Should it be at the sound engineer for not balancing vocal and instruments? Should it be Musical Director Lance Horne for not knowing when to pull the instruments back? Or should it be the singer for not developing the chops to outshine his band (or to pick material he could land audibly)? Some audience members squirmed at the frequent raciness and the song (“Beautiful”) in which every adjective was the
F-word was a one-joke pony.

Carla Gordon
Cabaret Scenes
May 28, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org