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“Jazz and Cocktails”
Don’t Tell Mama – September 14, October 5, November 11, December 9
Music critic Henry Pleasants once wrote of Peggy Lee: “She knows that when an actor stands stock still, characterization may begin with the twitch of a pinky, the lowering of the eyelids or a slight cocking of the head….” A similar observation might be made of Kathryne Langford in “Jazz and Cocktails,” her show at Don’t Tell Mama.
Langford—backed by musical director Wells Hanley on piano, Marco Panascia on bass, and Vito Lesczak on drums—begins with Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life,” exhibiting just the kind of nuance Pleasants wrote about. Without any introduction from the sound booth, she takes to the stage and finds her light. She remains stationary throughout the song, her wings of blond hair framing her face. The alto voice is smooth, clear, and seductive. As you watch her facial expressions subtly reflect the lyrical content, you begin to imagine a film-noir siren—cool and more than slightly jaded—performing in, as Strayhorn’s lyric describes it, “some small dive.”
Her follow-up is “Bye Bye Blackbird” (Mort Dixon, Ray Henderson). Here Langford sings with a little more oomph, against the thumping sounds of bassist Panascia. She gives us the slightest hint of a flirtatious smile, and we see a different character from the icy goddess of “Lush Life.” In the last part of the song, things accelerate to a swing tempo, and during the final phrases Langford’s voice swells with a crescendo. This moment is both surprising and effective.
With subsequent songs Langford displays different hues. She is even warmer and more emotional on “Day Dream” (Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, John Latouche) than on “Blackbird.” She has, perhaps, her biggest success of the evening with samba-inflected “Through the Windows of Cars” (Fran Landesman, Roy Kral), with a lyric that overflows with rich imagery. She again effectively modulates the volume of her voice, this time to create a sense of movement. It’s as though she’s gently motoring through the countryside, pumping the acceleration pedal now and then, moving from a hum to a lively purr and back again to a hum.
She’s also very good on Cole Porter’s “It’s All Right With Me” in which, once more, she strikes a teasingly seductive attitude. On the phrase beginning with “it’s the wrong song,” Hanley adds some appropriately dissonant embellishments. The song then moves into a rowdy honky-tonk mode, as though the singer has pulled her listeners into a noisy roadhouse for some dirty dancing.
On the night I saw the show, something unfortunate seemed to happen starting with Langford’s next selection, “I’m Beginning to See the Light” (Don George, Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington, Harry James). The energy seemed to flag and Langford sounded tentative, distant. Her voice seemed to vanish into the accompaniment, and I wondered for a while if something was wrong with the setting of the sound system. The problem continued through subsequent numbers. By the time she got to “Love Is a Necessary Evil (Marvin Fisher, Jack King), I found I was even missing some of the lyrics. Was Langford’s tendency toward understatement washing out her presence?
She rebounded with her penultimate song, Neil Young’s “My Heart,” which contained the most open, emotional singing of the program. Earlier in the evening, Langford mentioned her Texas roots. The country-ish arrangement of Young’s song seems to bring those front and center. Her encore is a lively, 1950s boogie-rock version of Billy Hill’s “The Glory of Love,” which culminates in an audience sing-along.
I so enjoyed what Langford did in the early part of the program. I suggest that she, Hanley, and director Gerry Geddes take a look at the songs in the latter part. Are there too many selections on which she takes too laid-back a tack, creating a sense of monotony? We should appreciate Langford’s Peggy Lee-like ability to find and express the subtlest nuances in a song, rather than fear she is falling into an impressionist’s caricature of late-career Lee: that of a singer so immersed in “is that all there is?” ennui that medics need to scramble to find a pulse.
Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing reviews for BistroAwards.com in 2011. More recently he has contributed "Cabaret Setlist" articles about cabaret repertoire. Other reviews and articles have appeared in theaterscene.net and clydefitchreport.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.
