It was a magical mix. Rebecca Luker, a captivating lyric soprano with an actor’s dedication to lyrics and a musician’s love for melodies, presented the glorious music of Jerome Kern in a two-night concert at 54 Below. On the dazzling opening night, there were several standing ovation moments, except there wasn’t enough room for the packed audience to stand.

Luker’s beautiful voice and theatrical training are the perfect vehicles for the Kern cavalcade of melodies. His music came from a European sensibility, yet he expanded his styles, becoming more American in sound, more casual in content. Luker followed 30 years of Kern’s career, from the years of the Princess Theatre shows through his collaboration with the snappy Dorothy Fields and into the 1940s.

The first showstopper came after Luker’s selections from Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 1927 groundbreaking, Show Boat. Although she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role as ingénue Magnolia in the 1994 Hal Prince-directed production of the show, here she chose two torch songs written for a different character.  “Bill,” with the P.G. Wodehouse lyrics, had been cut from one of Kern’s Princess Theatre show, Oh, Lady! Lady!  A decade later, Hammerstein combined his own lyrics with those of Woodhouse for Show Boat’s “Bill,” which became the standard rendition.  Luker followed with “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” the favorite song of the showboat’s star, Julie, but also sung by Magnolia in the show.

Luker’s ballads were sumptuous with warmth and dimension. She was immaculate with phrasing, bringing a dreamy lilt to Hammerstein’s story of “The Folks Who Live on the Hill.”  She soared with the theatrical melody of “The Song Is You” (Hammerstein), elicited the good humor in “A Very Good Girl on Sunday” (“Saturday Night”) (Lyrics: Woodhouse), playful sarcasm in “My Husband’s First Wife” (Irene Franklin) and gave a sassy flippancy to “I’ll Be Hard to Handle” (Otto Harbach). Another show-stopping moment came with Dorothy Fields’s elegant “The Way You Look Tonight.” Fields’s sophisticated heart-breaking lyrics to “April Fooled Me” ended the show with poignancy.

Directed by husband Danny Burstein, Luker added just enough snippets of Kern’s life to keep the show moving crisply. Accompanied by Musical Director Joseph Thalken on piano and Dick Sarpola on bass, Luker returned for two encores, Kern and Hammerstein’s haunting “Why Was I Born?” and “All the Things You Are.” Now the audience found room to stand for a final ovation.

Elizabeth Ahlfors
Cabaret Scenes
July 6, 2012
www.cabaretscenes.org