Two for the Road

The choice of an opening number is always a crucial one for a cabaret act. Ideally, you want something that's an attention-grabber, that plays to your strengths as a performer, and that gives the audience some idea of what to expect from you. The song Liz Callaway and Alex Rybeck chose to open their two-night Cabaret St. Louis gig at the Sheldon this Thursday [February 5th, 2009] - Bernstein's "Something's Coming" from West Side Story - did all that and more.

Although only a few minutes long, the performance encompassed everything we'd see and hear for the next two hours: Ms. Callaway's vocal virtuosity and music theatre smarts, Mr. Rybeck's endlessly inventive arrangements and polished pianism, and the easy give-and-take between these two consummate cabaret pros.

It don't get much better than that.

For those of us lucky enough to have seen Ms. Callaway and/or Mr. Rybeck in action before, of course, none of this will come as a surprise. For everyone else it was, presumably, a joyous discovery.

Witness, for example, the spontaneous standing ovation following their penultimate song - Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Memory", which Ms. Callaway performed for several years on Broadway. Yes, a more cynical reviewer than yours truly might dismiss that as a kind of Pavlovian response to a classic "eleven o'clock number". But that wouldn't explain repetition of that "standing o" after the closer - the more reflective "The Story Goes On" from Maltby and Shire's 1983 Baby, which she also did on Broadway. Standing ovations are sometimes cheaply bought here, but this was simply recognition of a job well done.

No, Liz Callaway is not her more famous sibling Ann Hampton Callaway - a fact she mines for comic gold in a send-up of "I've Gotta Be Me". She is her own unique and equally talented self, as she demonstrated in an evening rich with mostly familiar songs from Broadway and Hollywood delivered with a winning combination of skill and sincerity. There was also a delightful brace of hits from the 1960s (from her recent The Beat Goes On CD) that made up the bulk of what has become the obligatory second act at the Savoy Room. It's a tribute to Ms. Callaway and Mr. Rybeck's abilities that a long intermission cannot wither them nor bar prices stale their infinite variety.

I keep referring to Ms. Callaway and Mr. Rybeck together because they are clearly equal partners in the act. For some cabaret artists, the guy at the piano is there to support the star. He might have done the arrangements and might get a couple of solo breaks, but there's never any doubt about who's in charge. As I have observed in the past, however, Mr. Rybeck is very strong performer in his own right - a fact Ms. Callaway obviously appreciates and of which she makes good use. He's a solid backup vocalist, for example, in "Half as Big as Life" (from Burt Bacharach and Hal David's only Broadway musical, Promises, Promises) and a medley of "The Beat Goes On" and "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)", and occasional comic foil at other times. Throughout the evening, his smart, "on the scene" arrangements kept everything flowing smoothly; before we knew it 10 PM had arrived and we were applauding.

I see that I have spent so much bandwidth praising the performers that I haven't said much about the program itself. Without going into laborious detail, I'll just note that there were over two dozen very well-chosen numbers ranging from the tried and true ("People", "Leavin' on a Jet Plane", and an ingenious Gershwin medley) to the semi-obscure ("What More Do I Need", from Saturday Night, an early Sondheim show that closed before it could open). There were lovely ballads such as Stephen Schwartz's "Meadowlark" and Loesser's "My Heart is So Full of You", up-tempo numbers like the aforementioned Gershwin medley, and some wonderful comic songs, including a parody of Sondheim's "Another Hundred People" that gets plenty of laughs out of the difficulty of singing some of The Great Man's trickier compositions (e.g., "Another hundred lyrics just flew out of my brain"). Ms. Callaway even included a nod to her career in animated musicals with Flaherty and Ahrens' "Journey to the Past" from Anastasia (1997) - a film that looks and sounds so much like a stage musical I'm surprised someone hasn't done the adaptation already.

It was, in short, a great evening at the cabaret. Even the usually mediocre sound at the Savoy Room seemed clearer and the smaller number of tables, while unfortunate from a financial point of view, made for better sight lines. To paraphrase Mr. Sondheim, what more did we need?

By the time you read this, of course, Liz Callaway and Alex Rybeck will already have moved on to their next gigs. You can find out what Ms. Callaway is up to at her web site, lizcallaway.com . Mr. Rybeck, alas, does not have a web site, but if you're a Facebook person you'll find him there.

Next in the Cabaret St. Louis season: Broadway baritone Tom Wopat with Andy Ezrin on the ivories at the Kranzberg Center February 11th through 14th. For more information, call 314-523-1111 or check out their site at cabaretstl.org .