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“Let Me Entertain You”
Feinstein’s at Loews Regency – May 1 and 22, 2011
Laura Benanti’s legit vocal chops, physical beauty, and radiant stage presence work together to invoke comparisons to elegant early-1960s musical-theatre songstresses. If she’d been born a few decades earlier, Benanti would have competed for Broadway roles with such classy performers as Carol Lawrence and Anna Maria Alberghetti.
In the age of Glee, though, “classy” must be undercut lest it seem too elitist. In her show at Feinstein’s, Benanti remarked self-deprecatingly on her status as a drama-department dweeb who managed to make good in spite of herself. Her most telling anecdote was about how, when a grammar-school girl, she ran home in tears because her classmates had no idea who Rosemary Clooney was.
The nerdy-misfit persona gave the singer something tangible to center her act around. It’s useful, because her public image is probably not as defined as, say, Kristin Chenoweth’s. When you think Laura Benanti, you think about the varied characters she has played: Cinderella from Into the Woods; Gypsy‘s Louise; Claudia, the wistful ex-lover from Nine; kooky Candela from Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (a role that earned her a fourth Tony nomination two days after her show debuted at Feinstein’s).
So, reformed theatre geek it is—and Benanti plays the role to the hilt, barely giving it a rest. During her act she showed the audience two photographic displays: one demonstrated her remarkable resemblance to recent royal bride Kate Middleton’ the other showed her as a frizzy-haired kid who, frankly, didn’t appear especially geeky. But that was beside the point. There she was in person—the regal swan, craning her lovely neck for a backward glance at the hapless duckling she was.
Swans. Ducklings. It’s hard to avoid bird imagery when describing Benanti, especially when she interrupts her giddy, seemingly improvised patter to sing. Benanti’s voice floats, swoops, flutters, soars. There’s an almost literal chirp—a flutiness—that predominates. The audience’s ears seemed attuned to that bright trill from the first notes of her first song—or, rather, her first medley: “Let Me Entertain You” (Jule Styne/Stephen Sondheim) from Gypsy, oddly married with the Gershwins’ “They All Laughed.” (Only those who knew beforehand about her nerdy past would have guessed the significance of this anthem of personal vindication.)
Benanti’s song selection was varied. She slipped comfortably into “the joint is jumpin’” mode with the Joe Williams hit “Alright, Okay, You Win” (Sid Wyche/Mayme Watts). Later she accompanied herself handily on ukulele for a quietly Betty Boop-ish “I Wanna Be Loved by You” (Herbert Stothart/Harry Ruby/Bert Kalmar), which gave way to the Beatles novelty “Honey Pie” (Lennon & McCartney) in which Benanti took the kazoo line sans kazoo. (Aside from the uke medley, she was accompanied throughout by the fine Mary Mitchell Campbell.)
Songs that fluctuated between passages of lilting girlishness and full-throated theatricality showed Benanti off best. An early highlight was her rendition of “Skylark” (Johnny Mercer/Hoagy Carmichael) Her actor’s skills of concentration were utilized fully here. On the line “sad as a gypsy serenading the moon,” you almost believed her mind’s eye watched vagabonds sawing at violins around a campfire. She ended the song with a breathy phrase, then an especially rich vibrato sign-off.
She wanted to sing everything, she said, which might explain her penchant for medleys. Perhaps the best of the bunch was her grouping of Sondheim selections: “So Many People” from Saturday Night, followed by two passages from Passion (including the “Loving You” theme). The songs created a dramatic progression on the theme of love—from joyful appreciation to desperate obsession. Benanti performed it all with subtlety and—yes—passion.
But more often than not there was one selection in each medley that stood out and made the rest extraneous. Case in point was her re-imagining of the Jule Styne/Sondheim “Some People” from Gypsy, sung over a gently rolling piano arrangement. She made it a song of yearning rather than the usual determined belt. This allowed the listener to experience the familiar lyrics in a fresh way. But then came “Small World” and “Together,” presented in much the same fashion, diluting the effectiveness of the approach. Late in the program Benanti lampooned her medley fixation with a grab bag of songs representing everyone from Paul Robeson to Beyoncé Knowles. Good silly fun.
But I prefer my Benanti straight up with a dash of bitters, as with her performance of “Unusual Way,” her big song from Nine. A quiet beginning gave way to agitation during the bridge, as stifled emotions found voice, surged, thrashed against the confines of the melody like a trapped dove in a wire cage—before quieting once again.
Laura Benanti will not likely abandon the Broadway stage for nightclubs. But she reminds us how useful it is for cabaret singers to be adept actors–able to summon emotions with ease and authority.
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.
