Barbara Porteus

August 3, 2009

Don’t Tell Mama July 24 & 27

With an extensive background in theatre and cabaret, Barbara Porteus commands the stage like a pro. Backed by musical director Barry Levitt on piano, Eric Udel on bass, and Mayra Casales on percussion, she sings her way with assurance through an appealingly eclectic program in a voice equally attractive across her entire range, chest voice (Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour’s “I Don’t Know Enough About You”) to head tones (“How High the Moon” by Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis).

Her interpretations of two Joni Mitchell songs, “I Had a King” and “All I Want,” have a solid dramatic core, and she delivers a tastefully lowdown rendition of the classic “My Handy Man.” With the warm and wonderful “A Whole Lotta Sunlight” (Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan, from the musical Raisin), Porteus justifies her claiming this as her favorite song.

In many of the other numbers, she appears to favor what I would label nightclub singing—a presentational approach in which style and arrangement take precedence over nuance and exploration of the lyric. Sometimes this pays off, as with “Too Close for Comfort” (Jerry Bock, Larry Holofcener, George David Weiss); though filled with musical bits and business, the arrangement and performance are so good that the number works very well, indeed. Other selections are less successful. An ill-conceived snappy treatment of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “The Gentleman Is a Dope” has no starch or dramatic point of view; as a result, it becomes dull. Similarly, though the audience seemed thrilled with “I’ve Got the World on a String” (Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen), I found the interpretation overly slick and hollow.

There is one other issue. Though I have often admired and enjoyed Casales’s work in the past, in a few numbers here I found her conga too assertive, distracting from Porteus’s singing. What’s more, the conga strikes me as an odd choice to be this show’s only percussion—though Casales played the instrument with appropriate delicacy during the encore piece.

 

 

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About the Author

Roy Sander has been covering cabaret and theatre for over thirty years. He’s written cabaret and theatre reviews, features, and commentary for seven print publications, most notably Back Stage, and for CitySearch on the Internet. He covered cabaret monthly on “New York Theatre Review” on PBS TV, and cabaret and theatre weekly on WLIM-FM radio. He was twice a guest instructor at the London School of Musical Theatre. A critic for BistroAwards.com, he is also the site’s Reviews Editor; in addition, he is Chairman of the Advisory Board of MAC.