The Standard of Things

Julie Budd at The Cabaret in the Savoy Room

Singer/actress Julie Budd came to The Cabaret in the Savoy Room series this week accompanied by an impressive biography and glowing reviews by the likes of Rex Reed and the late blues and jazz critic Philip Elwood. It is, therefore, a bit embarrassing to confess that while I found her performance on opening night technically impressive - her virtuosity is really unimpeachable - I also found it, for the most part, curiously un-involving.

Perhaps it was the sound system, which unnecessarily amplified her powerful voice to somewhere around the pain threshold; or the programming in the first act, which raced through seventeen American Songbook standards in a sort of Cliff's Notes fashion that tended to gloss over contrasts in lyrical content; or the fact that, while Ms. Budd always engaged the audience with her between-songs patter, she rarely did it with the songs themselves.

A child prodigy who began singing professionally in the late 1960s at the age of twelve, Ms. Budd has often been favorably compared to Barbra Streisand, who made her own big impression on Broadway (as Miss Marmelstein in I Can Get for You Wholesale) when Ms. Budd was still a tyke. Like the older singer, with whom she shares Brooklyn origins, Ms. Budd has a big "Broadway belter" voice, a fine sense of comedy, and a tendency to elongate and distort vowels in her singing. The comparison is further emphasized by her inclination to take considerable liberties with melody and rhythm (no shortage of tempo rubato in this show) and rely heavily on grand vocal and physical gestures. I lost count of the number of times she finished a song with her arms spread wide and head thrown back.

There's nothing objectively wrong with any of this. If this had been a concert in Powell Hall rather than cabaret in the Savoy Room, it would have been fine and, indeed, much of the opening night audience clearly loved every minute of it. For me, however, the bottom line was that the show was less about the music and lyrics and more about Julie Budd's remarkable dynamic range and vocal stamina. Cabaret, as Steve Ross has observed, is all about the lyrics, and I felt that they were somewhat short-changed.

That's a bit surprising, given that Ms. Budd clearly appreciates a well-turned phrase and, in fact, she's at her best when she takes a bit more time with a song and allows the lyric to take center stage. A good example is her second-act tribute to the late Dorothy Fields, which ranges from the heartfelt combination of "I'm in the Mood for Love" (music by Jimmy McHugh, introduced by Frances Langford the 1935 film Every Night at Eight) and "The Way You Look Tonight" (introduced by Fred Astaire in Swing Time in 1936) to the hilarity of "If They Could See Me Now" (from 1966's Sweet Charity, the first of three collaborations with Cy Coleman). Moments like these were the high points of the evening for me.

Ms. Budd's chatty and often quite informative comments on the music and her own introduction to it were also bright spots in the show. An anecdote involving the late Peggy Lee was particularly amusing, and since Richard Connema includes it in his 2004 review of her show, you might as well read it there . It would have been nice to hear more of that same open and direct communication in her musical performance. She's clearly capable of it, and for more intimate venues it would be more effective.

One person with whom Ms. Budd clearly did communicate during the show was her pianist and music director Arthur Weiss. Alert to every change of tempo and melodic variation, Mr. Weiss was the ideal accompanist. He's a major asset in the act.

The arrangements (which Mr. Weiss played so effortlessly that I thought they were his) were by Ms. Budd's musical mentor Herb Bernstein. They seamlessly blended songs into inventive medleys. Mr. Bernstein's combination of Jimmy Webb's "Didn't We" and Neil Sedaka's "Hungry Years", for example, produced an interesting hybrid with a musical life of its own.

Julie Budd's The Standard of Things continues at The Cabaret at the Savoy Room through Sunday [December 2nd, 2007]; call Metrotix at 314-534-1111 for tickets. If you're a fan of Ms. Budd or, for that matter Ms. Streisand, you can probably ignore most of my complaints. She does what she does very well. If her style suits yours, you won't want to miss her.

Those of you outside of the St. Louis area should know that after her appearance here it's back to The Big Apple to complete shooting of the film Two Lovers and to prepare for a New Year's Eve gig with the Long Island Philharmonic. For information on Julie Budd's future appearances and recordings, check out her web site: juliebudd.com .

Next at the Savoy Room: cabaret legend Andrea Marcovicci January 31st through February 3rd, 2008. Check out their web site for details.

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