By Bart Greenberg***The cabaret tyro Ethan Mathias came to The Green Room 42 for his new show, Wait ‘Til You See What’s Next. With a topnotch team of music director Michael Lavine and director Eric Michael Gillette, the 17-year-old looked backwards to his early years as a 
performer and ahead to his future goals. While the “looking back” part occasionally cloyed, the looking forward showed a great deal of promise.
A fine collection of mostly theater standards, along with a few surprises, gave a fine demonstration of the range of his talent and his smooth delivery. He has learned how to deal with complex lyrics (“If You Can Find Me, I’m Here”–Stephen Sondheim) and how to reach out to the audience throughout. While he avoided any straight-out comedy songs, he certainly showed a connection to joy in such grand moments as “I Hear Bells” (David Shire,Richard Maltby, Jr.) and “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da” (John Lennon, Paul McCartney), complete with audience singalong.
A fine mash up was the very touching “Getting Tall” (Maury Yeston) and the delightful “Come On Snow” (Craig Carnelia)—a smart cabaret combination that truly told a story encompassing Mathias’ spoken word as well. With Lavine providing some vocal balance, he attacked “I Can See It” (Harvey Schmidt, Tom Jones) with enough passion and desire to make him a front runner for the upcoming Fantasticks revival. And yet one more pairing exhibited Mathias’ versatility and humor: G. F. Handel’s “Si, tra i ceppi,” from the opera, Berenice, with “The Joint Is Really Jumpin’ at Carnegie Hall” (Roger Edens, Hugh Martin, Ralph Blane), which also gave the singer a chance to show off the power of his maturing baritone voice.
Mathias ended the surprisingly brief (under an hour) show with two very personal numbers expressing exactly where he is right now in life. The Jason Robert Brown title tune and Edward Kleban’s “Self-Portrait”—excellent choices, as was the entire set list. Mathias literally left us wanting more.
Photos by Jonathan Slaff
