Donald Houtz: Simply Sondheim
Donald Houtz
Simply Sondheim
Sterling’s Upstairs at the Federal, North Hollywood, CA
March 15, 2015
Reviewed by Elliot Zwiebach for Cabaret Scenes
Donald Houtz has a rich, resonant, consistently strong voice. He knows how to sing a song very well, but not always how to interpret it.
If he were singing on a Broadway stage, he would be justifiably applauded for his solid vocal performances. But, in the close quarters of a cabaret stage, a singer needs to project more feelings and nuance when singing a lyric—to express a subtext or to deliver some emotional wallop —and that’s something Houtz did not do consistently in his latest show. There was often no nuance, no shading and no indication he understood the emotions behind the words he was singing.
In an evening of Sondheim songs—songs that certainly contain nuance, shading and subtlety on multiple levels—Houtz did a nice job singing the melodies and, in the first half of the show, an especially terrific job setting up numbers. For example, he talked about his lifelong desire to tread the boards on Broadway, then opened an onstage trunk to pull out a pop-up top hat and magically-appearing cane for a nice, solid performance of “Broadway Baby,” with all the razzamatazz the song requires.
He introduced a tender “Not While I’m Around” by talking about a younger sister whom he promised to always look after; and he discussed Sondheim’s mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II, and the impact a particular song had on the budding composer, pairing “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” with an effective, lyrically-emphatic “Children Will Listen”—although never acknowledging the first song was by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
But as the show moved into its second half, his patter weakened as he used the quirks of supposed neighbors to set up his songs, which included “Being Alive” and “There Won’t Be Trumpets”—both of which sounded good technically, but which lacked any nuance from one line to the next.
On “Can That Boy Foxtrot,” Houtz didn’t seem to understand it’s not a song about a boy who can dance. He simply sang the key word “foxtrot” in a way that implied he could just as easily have been describing someone who could waltz or do a pasodoble.
His seeming lack of understanding of the lyrics was most apparent—and even more detrimental—in “I Never Do Anything Twice,” a song with a series of double entendres whose clever lyrics all received the same emphasis, or lack thereof, as every other word in the song, with the result that all the song’s humor seemed to sail over the heads of the audience, whose members never laughed aloud when he sang “I know that it’s hard” or “… who came at my command” or “I have developed more catholic tastes.” He simply sang the lyrics as words that matched notes.
Houtz was backed by a quartet of strong musicians, including musical director Steven Applegate on piano, Andrew Conrad on woodwinds, Tim Emmons on bass and Tom Zygmont on drums.
Category: Cabaret Reviews, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Cabaret Reviews, Regional
