Shirley Jones

March 17, 2011

“An Evening of Story and Song”

Feinstein’s at Loews Regency –  March 15 – 19

A sizable segment of the general public probably knows Shirley Jones primarily as the mother on the hit TV series The Partridge Family, but the rest of us may be more familiar with her film work (over thirty movies, among them major film versions of the classic stage musicals Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Music Man, and Elmer Gantry, for which she won an Oscar). She also appeared in three musicals on Broadway, not to mention her extensive non-Partridge TV work. Her show at Feinstein’s, which marks her solo nightclub debut, opens with a video segment that surveys her career and accomplishments. Though the video would benefit from some shaping and trimming, it not only reminds us what an illustrious career she’s had, it also is fun to watch.

The evening is perhaps 80% “song” (with accompaniment by musical director Ron Abel on piano and Mark Vanderpoel on bass) and 20% “story.” (I didn’t use a stopwatch.) She’s at her best—and her best is glorious— with songs that musically and/or lyrically project a sunny sense of life. Naturally, Rodgers & Hammerstein spring to mind, and happily she does a number of their works. Her lovely rendition of “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’?” achieves what I call the “ahh quality,” and “If I Loved You” is heartfelt, lush, and passionate. She does four songs from Oklahoma!, and for my money she could do the entire score—perhaps excluding “Lonely Room” and “Pore Jud is Daid”.

Meredith Willson’s work also belongs in the sunny category, and Jones’s performance of three songs from The Music Man is beautiful and rhapsodic, and Victor Young and Edward Heyman’s warmly romantic “When I Fall in Love” suits her to a T. She tells us that she will soon be 77 years old; I guess she should know, but you’d never think so from her singing.

Though it’s decidedly not a sunny song, she delivers a dramatically strong interpretation of Stephen Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns,” marred by a somewhat distracting piano accompaniment and a couple of infelicitous vocal devices, e.g., an excessively sustained note. Rodgers & Hart are not an ideal match for Jones. While her renditions of “This Can’t Be Love” and a pairing of “Little Girl Blue” and “Blue Moon” are unexceptionable, they are also unexceptional. What’s more, the nightclubby arrangements that Rodgers & Hart’s “Where or When” and Herman Hupfeld’s “As Time Goes By” are subjected to deprive these great songs of their sentiment and heart. Finally, a good cabaret director (no director is credited) might have instructed her not to move so much in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone”; it undermines what would otherwise be an excellent interpretation.

In her spoken segments, Jones talks about her childhood in rural Pennsylvania, her first New York audition (a wonderful story), meeting Sondheim, her two husbands (actor-singer Jack Cassidy and comic Marty Ingels), her children, and her career. Throughout, she’s gracious, charming, and lovely in every way.

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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.