WALL STREET JOURNAL
Friday, September 30,
2011
Karen Akers: 'Live, Laugh, Love'
By Will Friedland
The Oak Room (at the
Algonquin Hotel)
59 W. 44th St., (212) 840-6800
Through Oct. 29
Ms. Akers is no slouch at singing the canonical
songbook colossi (as on her 2008 album "Simply Styne"), but where she
really excels is in the interpretation of such modern masters as Kander &
Ebb and Maury Yeston. In her finest Oak Room offering yet, Ms. Akers divides
Sondheim numbers, both famous and obscure, into categories suggested by the
climactic song from "Follies," and she starts by turning "Live,
Laugh, Love" into something less caustic and more directly upbeat than it
is at the Marriott Marquis. She gives us Sondheim the romantic ("Take the
Moment"), Sondheim the trickster (his little known Gershwin homage
"More"), Sondheim the tragedian ("Loving You") and Sondheim
the showman ("Let Me Entertain You"). But the point that most
resonates is that the composer-lyricist is often the most resolutely
Sondheimian, the most purely himself, when expressing unbridled rapture, as in
Ms. Akers's 11 o'clock number, "What More Do I Need?"
