By Marilyn Lester**** As time marches on, as new songs enter the American songbook and as more and more cabaret shows move further away from the classics of the past, preservation of this musical heritage becomes ever more vital. In a person-on-the-street interview, for instance, how many would recognize the names Noël Coward or Beatrice Lillie? Not many, we reckon. So hats off to Sally Darling, a champion of this music and a worthy interpreter of the art form of “sophisticated songwriting.” In Sally Darling Sings Beatrice Lillie at Don’t Tell Mama, Darling captured the essence of her subject to the proverbial “T.”
Beatrice Lillie was an immensely popular, one-of-a-kind, wildly spontaneous, eccentric actress-singer and comedic performer, as well as a great interpreter of the Noël Coward canon. Darling selected, and puckishly and delightfully sang, some of Cowards most delectable humor pieces, including “Mad Dogs and Englishman” (which Lillie introduced), “A Bar on the Piccola Marina” (with full introduction) and “I’ve Been to a Marvelous Party.” The singer’s own comedic skills were exhibited at the fore with her openers of two Dietz and Schwartz numbers, “Nannette” and “Paree.” With laughter abounding, Darling set off on her trek through the world of Lady Peel (Lillie had married into the British nobility!).
What was striking about …Sings Beatrice Lillie is the economy with which the show was constructed. With such a vast array of possibilities in narrative and song choices, Darling selected just enough to get her points across while covering the most important facets off Lillie’s life and career. Darling’s enthusiasm, animation and natural sense of how to navigate the real estate of the stage all helped set the tone and kept the pacing swift and enjoyable. The common thread in this genre is that each song is a story, a mini drama of some proportion and style. What Darling is able to do is interpret and tell that story with the emotional impact required, from the downright funny to the ironic, such as Coward’s “(I’m So) Weary of It All” and “Maud,” written by Lillie’s sister, Muriel Lillie, with Nicholas Phipps.
Darling’s closer was a song written long after Lillie died (1989), “As We Stumble Along” (Lisa Lambert/Greg Morrison) from The Drowsy Chaperone. It is a song Lillie would have made her own, and a fitting tribute from Darling. But the encore, Lillie’s whimsical classic, “There Are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden” (Lisa Lehman/Rose Fyleman) was the perfect way to end the show. Accompanying Darling, music director-pianist, Mathew Martin Ward, navigated the keys splendidly, providing a priceless turn as a chorus off natives throughout “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.”
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