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Baby Jane Dexter is a savage when she's working. No stone is unturned. It goes with being a truth teller. For several decades, she's been one of the best things to happen to cabaret. Teachers and directors even bring students to observe her unique style. Too, legions of fans return over and over. They are never let down. She's an original in a world filled with cookie cutter, overrated neophytes who get by on run-of-the mill vanity shows.
Some performers only listen to ego-driven writers who believe their formulaic monotony is the only way. Baby Jane is an original with a subtle cutting edge so sharp, you better hide the scissors. It's been a long journey and she did it the hard way (as noted in the past.) That's why she's a winner. She knows who she is. Since her unobtrusive comeback in 1991, and after a few hits and misses, she got it right and there's been no stopping her since. There's a reason the phrase "the real thing" pops up so often when critics refer to her. Once again, with this run, she's blazing through a sizzling show like a four alarm fire. It's brassy, bouncy and poignant, as this local legend segues from one song to another as her story unfolds in words and music. From a killer song by Pink, a heart-breaker from Sondheim and a Dorothy Fields standard, no one rivets like Dexter.
With this show, Still Bad, Still Blue, she sails through a bevy of sad and glad emotions as she revisits songs from an old show, and adds new gems to her repertoire of signature tunes. It was in the mid-nineties when she appeared at the much-missed Eighty Eight's with a career changing show called Big, Bad & Blue. Calling it a cabaret opera, it was extended for 18 weeks, becoming the longest running show in that club's fabled history. Now, she revisits some highlights and builds to a searing finale that ties it all together. In doing so, she knocks it out of the park. And, her musical partner Ross Patterson is at the piano, sounding like an orchestra and complementing Dexter every step of the way.
There are so many highlights. Two songs by Abbey Lincoln color the turning point of the first half of the show. "Painted Lady" puts a sassy face on the singer who becomes saucy when she hits the stage.
"Throw it Away," one of Lincoln's most popular musical treatises, is a gutsy declaration of change, hope and owning that which you've lived … "keep your hands wide, open let the sun shine through … you can never a lose a thing if it belongs to you." The depression-era anthem "One Meatball" by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer, is a real crowd pleaser, which is turned into a sing-along here. "I Wish Someone Would Care" (Irma Thomas) is a trenchant essay on piercing loneliness that shatters. This is followed by the powerful "Damn Your Eyes" (Wyrick-Bogard), denouncing blind love. A turning point comes with an unforgiving message in "LA Breakdown" (Marks-Ingram), in medley with that reflective ode "The Way We Were" (Alan and Marilyn Bergman). This is a major risk-taker that pays off in spades. Taking a lesser known jewel and fusing it with an iconic hit linked to an iconic singer, shows how fearless Dexter is. Delivered with simplicity sans tempting theatrics, the message is one of looking back and then facing what lies ahead. All this is followed by Pink's wonderful "Glitter in the Air," where she relentlessly moves from not seeing herself in a negative way to gleefully taking chances ... "Have you ever looked fear in the face and said I don't care?" This profound self-analysis is the most effective reading in this circus of raw emotions in Dexter's never-say-die road show. With "If Love Was A Train" (Schocked), she ties it all together with arms wide open as cabaret's most compelling artist hits the bullseye exposing that last stone.
Per usual, Ms. Dexter takes songs we think we know, or that someone else has sung that we also think is definitive, and makes them her own. That is precisely what happens here, and is the key to the success of this intense show. At times, she recalls the great Nina Simone; "when you tell the truth, you can't miss." Go!
Baby Jane Dexter appears at Metropolitan Room located at 34 West 22nd Street on Fridays and Saturdays through December 23. Reservations and information: (212) 206-0440
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