By Michael Portantiere***“Less is more” is an axiom that will never be adopted by the Mabel Mercer Foundation for its New York Cabaret Conventions. The most recent edition of the annual event, held in Jazz at 
Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall, extended over three very full nights of entertainment and featured a large sampling of the best of the best among NYC cabaret/nightclub performers.
The show under review here, titled I’ve Heard That Song Before – The Music of Jule Styne, clocked in at just under three hours (with a 15-minute intermission). Our hosts for the evening were pianist-singer-musical director extraordinaire Billy Stritch and the fabulous singing actress Klea Blackhurst, both so charming and 100 percent assured in their hosting duties that anyone who didn’t know otherwise might think this is what they’re primarily known for. Happily, they also gave us a generous dose of their performing talents, opening the show with a Styne medley that included such 
classics as “I’ve Heard That Song Before,” “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” “I Walk Alone,” “Small World” (from Gypsy), “Three Coins in the Fountain,” “Five Minutes More,” and even the “Christmas Waltz” — all of those great songs but one featuring lyrics by Sammy Cahn, the single exception being “Small World,” with lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
There followed a parade of cabaret luminaries reveling in the marvelous music of Styne, beginning as Gabrielle Stravelli, possessor of one of the most beautiful and versatile voices to be heard in jazz or any other genre of music, shone in a spiffy jazz arrangement of “Just in Time” and a gorgeous rendition of “As Long as There’s Music.” Nicolas King was next up with “I Don’t Want to Walk Without You” and “The Things We Did Last Summer,” demonstrating once again that he’s just as persuasive with smooth, slow ballads as he is when scatting with the best of them.
The first half of the show proceeded as Natalie Douglas triumphed with two contrasting songs, the sweet, childlike “Neverland” from Peter Pan and the sexy-as-hell “Cornet Man” from Funny Girl. Max von Essen, in his NY Cabaret Convention debut, scored with a Mel Tormé arrangement of “All I Need Is the Girl” that featured some additional lyrics this reviewer has never heard before, but were written by Sondheim. Broadway star Christine Ebersole’s performance of “Make Someone Happy” was notable for both her gentle, heartfelt rendition of the bulk of the song and her full-throttle belting at the climax. The always hilariously deadpan Sidney Myer had great fun with the “Homesick Blues” from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and “I’m Going Back” from Bells Are Ringing. Act I of the show ended with a bang as Karen Mason created magic with “It’s Magic” and “I’m in Love/It’s Nothing Like Love,” then was presented onstage with the Donald F. Smith Award in acknowledgment of her status as one of cabaret’s MVPs.
Following intermission, Jim Caruso and Stritch teamed up as they do every Monday night at Birdland for Jim Caruso’s Cast Party, on this occasion breezing through the pop song “Saturday Night Is the Loneliest Night of the Week” and “Together (Wherever We Go)” from Gypsy. Blackhurst fascinated us with her delivery of an Ella Fitzgerald arrangement of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” that took major liberties with the song’s melody. Two numbers from the score of the movie Romance on the High Seas, “It’s You or No One” and “Put ’em in a Box,” were persuasively rendered by Stritch and Aisha DeHaas (respectively), then the latter reminded us of the beauty of the Styne, Comden & Green song “Being Good (Isn’t Good Enough)” from Hallelujah, Baby! Ben Jones showed off his comic chops as well as his phenomenal bari-tenor in “My Fortune Is My Face” from Fade Out/Fade In, then pivoted and broke our hearts with the little-known but deeply affecting Styne, Carolyn Leigh song “Killing Time.”
As Act II moved into its home stretch, King and von Essen joined forces for a delightfully gender-swapped rendition of “If Mama Was Married” from Gypsy, followed by the always brilliant Ebersole’s knockout performance of another song that was sung by Barbra Streisand in the Broadway version of Funny Girl but dropped for the movie: “The Music That Makes Me Dance.” Something very special was needed to follow that show-stopper, and the audience got it when Moipei, the rising-stars troupe of singing identical triplets from Kenya, showered their spine-tingling three-part harmonies on “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” 
from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and “People” from Funny Girl (both the stage and movie versions). The coveted cleanup slot of the evening went to Clint Holmes, who brought deep emotion and jazz vocal excellence to bear in “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” and “Time After Time,” and the show ended with the two most famous songs from Bells Are Ringing as Stritch and Blackhurst signed off with “The Party’s Over” and the full company took the stage to lead the audience in a sing-along version of “Just in Time.”
Never missing a beat throughout the proceedings were pianist Jon Weber, bassist Michael O’Brien and drummer Daniel Glass . (Weber was occasionally spelled by other pianists for certain numbers.) So wonderful were the performances of all the artists showcased that the long evening flew by, proving that, at least sometimes, more really is more.
Photos by Richard Termine
