Any listener with ear half-cocked to this pumped-up, drama-stoked, well-chosen collection of tunes from the B’way boards, is very quickly aurally informed that Dean Regan is a performer to be reckoned with. A formidable voice, wielded with strong, well-handled, off-hand hands-on command, and unabashed personality placement ever front and center, he has the chops to deliver quite a musical blow. Time after time he does. The vivacious orchestrations—with George M. Cohan’s anthemic title tune—immediately and thereafter feed the expected show-stopping stage excitement and urge the singer foward. Over and over Mr. Regan rises to the musical challenge. And then some. See, sometimes it seems he seduces himself with too much styling, abandons melody with cavalier choice, and crooningly crosses over, and over-emotes to become more Vegas Viagra than Broadway belt—an otherwise adept vibrant vocalist/ actor over the top when the top was more than tops enough. Too often, he strangely covers notes or occasionally neglects to round them out when he has shown himself quite capable of producing and presenting them perfectly. Listen to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s darkly drawn “This Nearly Was Mine” for a fascinating mix of both sides of this coin that is ever so slightly tarnished, but practically pure gold. Speaking of which, a Tony-deserving platinum tour-de-force reading is given to the brilliantly performed (and quirkily, but cleverly, included) Gilbert & Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General.”

Dean Regan: he generally am a very major modern Broadway musical model.

Noah Tree
Cabaret Scenes
July 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org