King Cole

[This is my review for KDHX-FM of Easy to Love, Jeff Harnar's Cole Porter show at The Cabaret at Savor in St. Louis.]

Probably the only proposition riskier than a cabaret show featuring the work of a songwriter almost nobody knows is a show featuring the work of a songwriter almost everybody knows. Last month at Savor's Flim-Flam Room, Klea Blackhurst showed us how to do the former with panache, if not always with soul, in her Vernon Duke tribute. This month in the same venue, Jeff Harnar and Alex Rybeck are showing us how to do it with both in Easy to Love - The Words and Music of Cole Porter.

This is the third joint appearance by Mr. Harnar and Mr. Rybeck in our fair city, and I'm happy to report that they're just as delightful, deluxe and de-lovely as they were back then. With a golden, flexible voice and engaging manner, Mr. Harnar is perhaps the ideal cabaret performer. He made eye contact early and often. He knew exactly when to "go inside" and when to reach out and engage everyone. And he was able to find remarkable variety in a lyric even when, as in the ever-popular "Can-Can", that lyric is superficially nothing but witty virtuoso word play or, as in the rarely-heard "I'm Throwing a Ball Tonight", it's so loaded with now-dated contemporary references that you'd think it would need footnotes.

It also doesn't hurt that he's the epitome of suave. As my wife noted afterwards, every woman in the audience probably had a small swoon moment at some point during the evening.

As arranger, pianist and - during the witty "Friendship Medley" - vocalist, Mr. Rybeck demonstrated the consummate skill that earned him a MAC Award nomination last month. That medley, for example, cleverly wove together songs from High Society, DuBarry Was a Lady, Out of This World, and Anything Goes, while the earlier "I Am in Love Medley" did similar justice to numbers from Can-Can, Fifty Million Frenchmen, Something to Shout About, Let's Face It and the film version of Kiss Me, Kate. In Mr. Rybeck's immensely well-crafted arrangements, popular classics like "You Do Something to Me" and "You're the Top" were seamlessly linked with less familiar gems like "Ought to Be You" and "Let's Not Talk About Love" (rhymes from which would later surface in Tom Lehrer's "When You Are Old and Gray"). It's no wonder he's in demand by some of musical theatre and cabaret's brighter stars.

St. Louis' own Carl Caspersen turned the duo into a trio with hip and knowing work on the string bass, particularly in the opening of "What is This Thing Called Love?", where Mr. Harnar's voice softly joined Mr. Casperson's jazzy plucked bass line in a magical evocation of the song's wistful and elegiac lyric.

As is the case with any well-crafted cabaret evening, Easy to Love offered its share of unexpected treasures. There was, for example, "Little Skipper", a novelty number written originally for Jimmy Durante in Red, Hot and Blue! (1936). Diligent research turned up some of the patter the great "Schnozzola" inserted into the number back then, thereby allowing Mr. Harnar to do what struck me as a remarkably on-target recreation of the classic Durante style. It was also gratifying to hear the lovely "You Can Do No Wrong", one of the many neglected songs Porter did for Vincente Minnelli's 1948 swashbuckling send-up The Pirate.

The bottom line is that Easy to Love is - well - easy to love. The show runs through Saturday, April 5th, in the Flim-Flam room at Savor, 4356 Lindell in the Central West End. A three-course, fixed-price dinner is available prior to each show. For more information, you may call 314-531-0220 or go to licketytix.com on the web. If you love Cole Porter or just near-perfect cabaret, you won't want to miss it.