Life’s pretty good right about now for Broadway actress Terri White. From a brief period of homelessness to a new marriage, performances in cabaret rooms and piano bars, roles in Nunsense, Chicago, Finian’s Rainbow, Bubbling Brown Sugar, Follies, she now makes her San Fran cabaret debut. Like her closing number, “Here’s to Life,” proclaims, “No complaints and no regrets.” White’s voice is deep and seasoned and she understands her range and chooses material that suits her well. Case in point, her rendition of Mama Morton’s “When You’re Good to Mama” (reprising her role in Chicago), sung down and dirty like it should.

White can shift easily from the ballad “More Than You Know,” sung as wedding vows to her wife, to a gospel-oriented “Bridge Over Troubled Water” that would be comfortable in any church choir. A hilarious impersonation of Nell Carter singing “Mean to Me” can stand side by side with an emotional kicker like “Everything Must Change.”

Some Broadway belters find the transition to intimate cabaret difficult, over-emoting and over-acting like they’re selling it to the back rows of the Shubert. And even though this show presents some big Broadway songs, Terri White never tips the scale into schmaltz. Her style is genuine and engaging. Heeding the lovely lyrics of her philosophical closer, she accepts that all her storms can “be weathered and all that’s good get(s) better.”

Steve Murray
Cabaret Scenes
July 10, 2012
www.cabaretscenes.org