When Jackie Kristel took the stage at the start of her debut cabaret show, A Girl You Should Know, she slipped while trying to mount a stool while the lights were still dark. As her opening number music swelled and the lights went up, Kristel quipped, “The first thing you should know about me is that I’m a klutz.” From that point on, she never tripped up and the audience was putty in her hands throughout her thoroughly engaging and entertaining performance—perhaps the strongest debut show I’ve seen this year.

I do have to offer one of those “full disclosure” thingies. A few years back, Kristel and I performed in a couple of group cabaret shows presented by Collette Black’s “Manhattan Cabaret Arts” workshops (Black also directed this show). At the time, I remember being very impressed with Jackie’s voice and cabaret potential, and would periodically encourage her to launch a solo show, or at least appear at some open mics like The Salon. While this connection to Kristel would never prevent me from pointing out the flaws and foibles of her solo show, her performance at Don’t Tell Mama only confirmed my original scouting report.

A strikingly attractive, raven-haired soprano, Kristel exhibited the poise, stage presence, sensuality and sense of humor of a cabaret veteran, most likely due to her experience as a magazine model, with speaking roles as an extra in TV and film, and her touring with the burlesque troupe The Glamazons. But this was still her debut foray into solo cabaret and her slight nervous energy and self-consciousness made her performance all the more adorable. The show’s title song (David Shire/Richard Maltby, Jr.) was an ideal introductory number, and as she pithily revealed bits and pieces of her personality throughout the set, her tight script was never cloying or cliché.

Early in the show, she expressed her affinity for boys with the cute story song, “Joshua Noveck,” by Douglas Bernstein and Denis Markell from the 1989 Off-Broadway review Showing Off. She then displayed her acting chops and flair for humor with Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler’s “The Morning After” (“Leave”), before slinking sexily on top of her musical director Tracy Stark’s piano for “No Man Left for Me” (Cy Coleman/Betty Comden/Adolph Green).

Kristel works as a teacher of four- and five-year-olds, which served as a jumping-off point for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “Getting to Know You” from The King and I. But before you could say, “Oh no, this is not a good cabaret song,” Kristel interrupted each chorus with funny schoolroom anecdotes, an excellent choice by director Black, as was segueing into Stephen Sondheim’s “Children Will Listen.” Later, Kristel showed off her flair for delivering songs that are lyrically dense and potentially difficult, such as “The Alphabet Song” (about the A to Zs of dating conquests), and “If You Hadn’t, But You Did,” which she followed up with a fascinating anecdote about running into Liza Minnelli on a Manhattan street and getting tips on singing the song from the legend who performed it in her shows at the Palace in late 2008.

While Kristel’s vocals could be even more powerful and smooth, she already has a strong and enchanting voice and she’s adept at a variety of styles—from quirky up-tempo songs to expressive ballads—and the joy she takes in singing is palpable. If she were an athlete, a scout would say that she not only has numerous innate gifts, but that she has plenty of performing “upside.” Jackie Kristel is not only a girl you should know, this is one cabaret babe to be reckoned with—now and in the future.

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