An Evening of Purely Cabaret

February 27, 2010

Purely Cabaret

featuring

Lindsay Sutherland Boal, chanteuse

Karen Lee-Morlang, piano

At the Vancouver Alpen Club

One sunny day during the Olympics, Dean and I decided to skip the crowds downtown and opted for a quiet lunch (complete with a bottle of Prosecco) at Marmalade Kitchen Bar.

As we basked in the sun we began chatting with Larry and Lindsay, the couple seated beside us. Chor Leoni eventually came up in the conversation, at which point we found out that Larry had sung under Diane’s direction back at Douglas College, and that Lindsay was an accomplished singer who would be performing in Vancouver the following weekend at the Alpen Club.

I was hooked when she told me the program was an exploration of cabaret songs. We called up our friends, Susanne (a fellow singer) and Al, and set up a date for dinner and cabaret. Little did we know what a treat was in store for us.

The concert

Pianist, Karen Lee-Morlang, began the evening by simply lining out the melody of Kurt Weill’s Mack the Knife. The simplicity of that first, bare melodic statement acted as an invitation to let yourself be drawn back in time, to an era of bitingly beautiful (and politically challenging) songs.

Lindsay Sutherland Boal made an extremely effective entrance by humming bits of Mack the Knife as she slowly walked through the tables and up onto the stage. What followed was a glorious selection of songs by Weill and Friedrich Hollaender, as well as a final selection by Theo Mackeben, interspersed with solo piano selections.

The programme was constructed to showcase Boal’s voice, Lee-Morlang’s piano mastery, the easy rapport the two artists shared, and the insights they have uncovered in the world of cabaret songs from the era of the Weimar Republic – and it worked beautifully.

Kurt Weill wrote his songs for his wife, the legendary Lotte Lenya, and her performances provide the yardstick against which other performances are usually judged. Here’s a YouTube clip of her singing Surabaya Johnny. Listen for the the deceptively simple-sounding accompaniment, and the complete mastery of sung and spoken language to tell a story – all from a Classically un-trained voice! It’s amazing.

Boal is a classically trained soprano with a wealth of singing experience on the opera and concert stage in Canada and Europe. Her teacher, Tracy Dahl, was in the audience. All that said, any concerns that the voice would be too big for the subtlety of cabaret were quickly allayed.

There is no question that Lindsay has the pipes, but more importantly, she has the skill and understanding necessary to perform cabaret repertoire. In particular, we all loved the way Lindsay can lift a phrase into the upper register of her voice while softening to a pianissimo. It takes a lot of good vocal technique to do that effectively. Radiant performances (in particular, Hollaender’s Eine kleine Sehnsucht and Berlin im Licht) showcased Boal’s full range and talent, but I never felt that I was listening to an “operatic” voice. I just felt like I was hearing wonderful singing.

We were seated at the back of the hall, kitty-corner from the stage, and I was worried that the performance would need a jumbo-tron to make it work. That was a needless concern: Boal’s spoken and sung diction (in both English and German) was beautiful, and even her softest and most intimate phrasings carried clearly.

Lindsay is more than “just a singer” (and every singer I know hates being described as such!) Songs such as Farewell Letter, Saga of Jenny, and Surabaya Johnny developed into perfectly-acted vignettes that ranged from anguish to high comedy and camp. It was exactly what this repertoire calls for and it was done exceedingly well.

I love cabaret songs, so it is hard to pick favourites from the stellar line up of tunes in Purely Cabaret. If I had to choose only three, they would be Saga of Jenny, You understand me so, and Ich will nicht vergessen.

For a completely over-the-top version of Saga of Jenny, check out this version as sung by Julie Andrews. (warning: This isn’t the Mary Poppins you remember.)

I’d be remiss to not acknowledge the stellar work by Karen Lee-Morlang at the piano and as musical director. The evening was a true meeting of equals creating art together. My favourite piano interludes were Ich tanze um die Weltmit (Hollaender) and Weill’s Speak Low, although again, it’s difficult to choose, and the wicked accompaniment to Tschaikowsky and other Russians isn’t to be missed! (We were all pretty breathless by the end of it.)

Bravo to Boal for putting together a stellar programme and focusing on songs that are often overlooked. She will premiere her one woman show Berlin im Licht in Ottawa later this year, but tells me she has at least a dozen other performances scheduled, so watch for her in your area.

Quibbles

A focal point of Purely Cabaret is Lindsay’s journey from opera to cabaret. It made for an entertaining narrative thread, but at times felt like a theme that was revisited too often. Some careful tightening of the script would help the flow of the show.

The other factor that impinged on our enjoyment of the evening was an overactive photographer using a camera with a very loud shutter. I know the importance of good publicity shots, and completely understand that ‘cabaret’ doesn’t carry with it the ‘quiet as a church’ performance expectations of a recital hall. I’d have been fine with him taking a dozen or so shots at the beginning of the show, but to to be jarringly interrupted throughout most of the performance (especially when we’d been admonished to turn off our cell phones or anything that made noise) was unwarranted.

The setting

The upstairs ballroom of the Vancouver Alpen Club is a trip back in time. Complete with enormous wrought iron candelabras, a sprung (but creaky) dance floor, and some faux gables and gingerbread over the stage, it provided a very atmospheric venue for Purely Cabaret. Now add in a pocket stage complete with a pendant-style street lamp, upright piano, and the back and forth of wait staff. If you’d squinted just a little and imagined a haze of cigarette smoke you could almost feel you were back in the 1930′s of Weimar, Germany.