Like most cabaret critics who must mentally multi-task when preparing a review, I’m constantly writing little notes to myself on a performer’s set list about various elements of the show—the vocals, the arrangements, the script, the band, the cocktails—well, you get the idea. It’s like being a baseball scout assessing all of a player’s specific skills to determine if everything adds up to the complete athletic package. But in reviewing cabaret shows, I sometimes find that there’s a disconnect between my specific written observations about how each song has been put over and how I feel about the show as I’m taking it all in. It’s not only the difference between thoughts and feelings, but the difference between intellect and instinct, and then deciding what’s going to rule the review. Sometimes it can’t always be head and heart.

This is the dichotomy I dealt with in reviewing Another Kind of Light, Raissa Katona Bennett’s recent show at Feinstein’s celebrating the release of her latest 15-song CD, featuring many she has performed in various shows over the years, and which included a few new tunes written especially for her. As the show moved along, I jotted down very positive notes about almost every song, all the while feeling that while Bennett was giving a solid, entertaining, professional performance, there were missing elements preventing the show from being truly special.

As befitting the show’s title, Bennett was luminous as she walked to the stage, opening with one of her signature songs, “Make Me a Kite” (Michele Brouman/Amanda McBroom), a lovely ballad that climaxed with her soaring soprano. She followed that with the John Lennon/Paul McCartney mid-tempo ballad from the White Album, “I Will,” which Bennett’s musical director and pianist David Caldwell transformed into a wonderfully languid 1940s-style torch song. Then came a sweet rendition of Stephen Hoffman and Michael Mooney’s “I Furnished My One Room Apartment,” and a jazzy, percussion-heavy version of Cole Porter’s “I Concentrate on You” (featuring the marvelous Ray Marchica on drums).

From that point on the show was pretty much a mixed bag, heavy on story/relationship songs that ranged from the playful to the poignant to the pedestrian. Bennett’s comedic sense and acting skills were brought to bear on the fun “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind” (Christine Lavin/Tom Smith), mainly because in real life, one can’t imagine Bennett not liking opera, skiing or sushi. While she could have been slinkier and sultrier on “Touch Song for Raissa,” about seduction through contemporary technology written for Bennett by Michael John LaChiusa (perhaps a piano mount was called for here), she was still adorably sexy while purring “C’mon and text me.” She wrapped her lilting soprano around a combination of “If I Love Again” with “Will You?,” and she and her band (including Marchica, Ritt Henn on Bass, and Sean Harkness on guitar, an all-star group that unfortunately wasn’t showcased enough) delivered the Marvin Hamlisch/Alan and Marilyn Bergman “Ordinary Miracles” as an effective power ballad. Bennett is the first person to record the Ron Abel/Chuck Steffan mid-tempo pop song “Waiting for a Westbound Train,” and Abel took to the piano for this show. As I listened to the solid band arrangement, and guest violinist Robin Batteau bring some ethereal colors to Bennett’s vocal, I wrote in my notes, “I bet this sounds much better on the CD.” Sure enough, it did.

Bennett’s soprano was taxed to the max on “How Could I Not?” (Alan Menken/David Spencer), which would have benefited from a more minimalist arrangement and a lower key on the vocal. Her versions of McBroom’s “Putting Things Away” and Stephen Flaherty/Lynn Ahrens’s “It’s Possible,” were sweet, but forgettable, and David Caldwell’s “A Tomb with a View” (which includes a lyric that became the CD and show title), is a pretentious lyric with a meandering melody on which Bennett did a yeowoman’s job making the song somewhat listenable.

Another one of her signature songs has become “Bye, Bye Ingenue,” which LaChiusa wrote for her after she had an epiphany while watching a young singer. Bennett obviously relates to the melancholy melody and introspective (if unsubtle) lyric about a woman who’s transitioned from blossoming leading lady to seasoned performer already in full bloom. But in addition to wondering whether this song would resonate even more if she sang it in a more sarcastic, self-deprecating style—and in a lower key—I also wonder whether she has completely come to terms with her own career transition.

Because when she does, that’s when she might start working with the kind of material that takes advantage of all her skills and current strengths that haven’t been fully explored in her cabaret shows: a vocal style that is much more compelling in her alto and mezzo than in her high soprano; a spunky, yet charming personality; an engaging, cheeky sense of humor; and her obviously solid acting skills (she was a standout this past summer playing multiple roles in the Rosemary Loar musical Spoolie Girl at the Midtown International Theatre Festival). That’s when Raissa Katona Bennett won’t just be “another kind of light,” but she’ll be light years ahead of most everyone else in cabaret. She’s isn’t shining quite that much yet, but she certainly has the potential.

Stephen Hanks
Cabaret Scenes
August 21, 2012
www.cabaretscenes.org