NEW YORK OBSERVOR
Send in the Karens!
By Rex Reed
Songstress Akers weaves a
sophisticated, beautiful Sondheim hat where there never was before in In Good
Company at the Oak Room.
Learning to sing the
complicated songs of Stephen Sondheim fluently, remain rue to your own style,
and examine fresh interpretations at the same time is a challenge few singers
have managed to master. Karen Akers is the rare exception. In her ravishing new
show at the Algonquin’s fabled Oak Room (through Oct. 29) she looks at the
brilliant composer’s erratic tempos and captivating lyrics through a magnifying
glass, finding new meanings under, behind and on the edges of lyrics less
courageous performers inevitably pass over. The result is adventurous and
thrilling.
With the elegance of a
Bolshoi ballerina, she also manages to evoke a friendly accessibility that is
inviting. One can imagine her picking apples in an orchard, wearing a sable
coat. With her dark purple baritone, the result is nothing like Barbara Cook’s
trilling soprano or Elaine Stritch’s critic-proof croak as she “talks” the
songs. Ms. Akers is an equally adept actress, but I get the feeling I am
hearing Sondheim for the first time. You can count on her as sure as a palette
of orange in autumn to illuminate the underappreciated and reveal surprises.
This is not the hackneyed, overexposed Sondheim other cabaret divas give you.
So anyone expecting a vocal caress by a title like “What More Do I Need” might
be fooled. From the score of Saturday Night, Sondheim’s earliest show, this
song is simultaneously giddy, infectious and cynical in its belief that even a
dismal New York winter can seem beautiful if you’re lucky enough to be two
instead of one:
A subway train thunders
through the Bronx,
A taxi horn on the corner
honks,
But I adore every roar.
And what more do I need?
I hear a crane making street
repairs
A two-ton child running wild
upstairs
Steam pipes bang, sirens
clang,
With your love, what more do
I need?
Divided into three sections
labeled Live, Laugh and Love, she examines both sides of the coins. “Live Alone
and Like It,” from the film Dick Tracy, and “Here We Go Again,” an obscure song
from Do I Hear a Waltz with music by Richard Rodgers, are about single people
who find happiness in the core of their own comfort zone. The selections in the
“Laugh” portion are not fall down funny (Sondheim doesn’t write many of those),
but she finds new things to do with the strippers’ “You Gotta Get a Gimmick”
from Gypsy, and she does it without the props. She introduces American
audiences to “But Underneath,” a brilliant song written especially for Diana
Rigg in the London production of Follies. It is beautiful and wrenching. On
“Would I Leave You,” from the same score, she turns that final “guess” into
more of a threat than a multiple-choice question. After so many difficult,
complicated and wordy songs with daunting harmonies and patterns of semantics
that break down the complexities of the joy and heartbreak in relationships, I
guess it’s only natural that she includes the threadbare “Losing My Mind” and
“Send in the Clowns,” but I’m tired of them both. Audiences still expect the
familiar, and she finds a newborn approach that I found miraculous.
There’s so much more, but get
to the Oak Room and make the journey yourself as Karen Akers teaches you
something while she entertains you royally. Don’t look for all this Sondheim in
Oshkosh. It’s too esoteric for some audiences and too smart for the Average
Joe, but just the kind of urbane, sophisticated evening you get only in New
York.
rreed@observer.com
