NEW YORK, Feb. 29 (UPI) -- Tony Award-winning actress-singer Christine Ebersole has teamed up with composer-pianist-vocalist Billy Stritch for an evening of cabaret loaded with wit and rich in artistry, truly worthy of its title "In Your Dreams."
Ebersole is celebrating the release of her first solo CD, "Live at the Cinegrill," on the Wailing Productions label. Her new cabaret show running through March 6 at Feinstein's at the Regency covers most of the material in the recording, recounting her personal journey from Winnetka, Ill., to Broadway, where she won the 2001 Tony for best leading actress in a musical for her performance in "42nd Street."
Stritch, a cabaret jazz headliner in his own right whose career was long associated with Liza Minnelli, makes a wonderful accompanist and is well equipped vocally to sing out on his own as he frequently does. Whereas Ebersole's voice is big and theatrical, Stritch's vocalizing is more limited in color and nuance. The only backup instrumentalist is double bassist Steve Doyle.
Ebersole, a tall, attractive blonde, does a lot more reminiscing than necessary. Some of her patter material is hilarious, but at times it is merely amusing and even extraneous. At her best vocally, she really swings and it's all sugar candy, fine and dandy. At her least effective, she can be almost perfunctory in her presentation of a song, particularly serious ballads.
She is at her most enchanting, however, in one of these ballads, the Jerome Kern-Oscar Hammerstein II tune "The Folks Who Live On the Hill," about the old married couple Darby and Joan who used to be Jack and Jill. This is one of the great songs in the American Songbook, and Ebersole gives it a memorable rendition.
From "42nd Street" she has selected Harry Warren's "You're Getting To Be A Habit With Me," giving it all the insouciant charm that won her the Tony Award, then tops it with a heartfelt rendition of another Broadway show tune from "Show Boat," Kern-Hammerstein's "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man of Mine."
She has her witty way with an almost forgotten Irving Berlin spoof, "Slumming on Park Avenue," and flies away vocally with the Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer classic, "Skylark." And for really brilliant singing, nothing tops Ebersole's stridently optimistic "There's A Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon For New York" from George and Ira Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess."
More offbeat is the song "To Keep My Love Alive" from Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart's "A Connecticut Yankee," a cheery novelty in the form of a confession by a serial killer who has dispatched several husbands in her search for happiness. It is a big hit with the cabaret audience, most of whom probably have never heard it before.
Stritch gets in his licks with the Kern-Hammerstein standard "Nobody Else But Me," a bossa nova knockout titled "Wave" by Antonio Carlos Jobim and a swinging rendition of the familiar "It's a Wonderful World," giving full weight to all of Harold Adamson's equally wonderful lyrics.
When Ebersole closes with Billy Reid's "It's A Pity To Say Goodnight," you feels she really means it. She's a most generous artist who probably would like to go on singing all night to please her audience.
