Craig Rubano: At Long Last Love - the Music and Lyrics of Cole Porter

The Cabaret at Savor

It has been nearly two years since St. Louis' own Craig Rubano found a place in his globe-hopping schedule for a set in his home town. For the opening night audience at Savor's Flim Flam Room that was apparently two years too long. The response to Rubano's program of Cole Porter love songs was warm and enthusiastic - a pair of adjectives that can be applied with equal accuracy to Rubano's performance.

Reviewing Craig Rubano's last appearance here at the Grandel Theatre in 2004, I remarked on his “ebullient and unashamedly genuine” performance style, his “supple light baritone” and his “ability to communicate the emotional core of every song”. This time around, let me add something I neglected to mention back then: Rubano's impressive dynamic range.

Broadway belting is relatively easy and Rubano can project with the best of them. What's tricky is dialing your voice back to piano or pianissimo without losing tone quality or pitch accuracy. Rubano does that unfailingly and to great dramatic effect. That's especially true in an intimate venue like the Flim Flam, which seats around 60 at small bistro tables and where no one is more than around 20 feet from the tiny stage. For a performer with Rubano's ability to establish instant rapport with the audience, it's an ideal room.

The program is a well-chosen mix of the familiar and the neglected from the Cole Porter catalog, including a couple of football fight songs that he wrote for his (and Rubano's) alma mater, Yale, back in 1910 and 1911. Hearing those adds a whole new level of humor to Tom Lehrer's satirical “Fight Fiercely, Harvard.”

Other delightful discoveries include “Red, Hot and Blue” (from the 1936 show of the same name) with its joking references to contemporary classical composers and performers, the wistful “Who Said Gay Paree?” (cut from 1953's Can-Can), and the droll “You Irritate Me So”, in which the singer praises his love with faint damns. That one is from the 1941 military comedy Let's Face It, which launched Danny Kaye's Broadway career. Only Porter, I think, could have brought it off.

That's not to say that there aren't Greatest Hits sprinkled throughout, although even some of them are given a unique spin, as in the ballad-tempo version of “Anything Goes” that opens the evening or the bi-lingual version of “Begin the Beguine” - possibly inspired by the two years Rubano spent in Peru (the country, not the Indiana town that gave birth to Porter). Most, though, get a straightforward and completely sympathetic reading. Sometimes a singer just needs to get out of the composer's way and Rubano has the good sense to know when to do that.

Of course, no singer can succeed without an astute accompanist, and Rubano's long-time musical director and arranger Alex Rybeck is, as always, right on target, even if he is shoehorned into a corner and playing what he refers to as a “premature baby grand”. A skilled pianist and composer in his own right, Rybeck is a reminder of the importance of the art of the accompanist. In fact, if I have any criticism of Rubano's current show, it's that the relative brevity doesn't offer Rybeck an opportunity for any solo breaks, which is a pity.

Craig Rubano's At Long Last Love continues in the Flim Flam room, upstairs at Savor, 4356 Lindell, through Saturday [October 7, 2006]. The room itself is a bit of a mixed blessing. The intimacy is nice, but the faux Egyptian décor - inspired by magician John Neville Maskelyne's famed Egyptian Hall in London - is a bit at odds with cabaret, and the dead acoustics require the use of amplification, if only for the benefit of the singer. Still, the atmosphere is right. Cabaret is fundamentally an art form of the night club and the Flim Flam Room is certainly that, hieroglyphics and velvet curtains not withstanding.

The full evening includes a prix fixe dinner in Savor's impeccable dining room and while the total bill isn't cheap, the food is excellent; the Gorgonzola Cheesecake, in particular, is not to be missed. For those on more limited budgets, there's a no-dinner late show on Saturday night at 9:15. For more information, call Savor at 314-531-0220 or order online at licketytix.com.

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