Janet S. Blake: Songs Along the Way
Janet S. Blake
Songs Along the Way
Tom Rolla’s Gardenia West Hollywood, CA, March 20, 2015
By Elliot Zwiebach for Cabaret Scenes
Photo: Rebecca Dru
Janet S. Blake embraces an audience with warmth and grace, and they return the favor. In her solo cabaret debut Blake engaged her listeners with her evocative, articulate singing and captivating, well-told stories that captured her essence — sweet, endearing, caring and talented. Her voice was rich, moving and expressive, she was always in full control of the emotions she was seeking to express, and her on-point patter served as strong connective tissue, extremely well written and well performed.
She did a good job choosing songs that told the story of her life —from a declarative, expressive “Much More (Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt, from The Fantasticks) to a gentle, thoughtful rendering of Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” to mark her arrival in New York to a wistful, evocative “Never Can Say Goodbye” (Clifton Davis) when she opted to leave the city for Los Angeles to a sweetly amusing “Remind Me” (Dorothy Fields/Jerome Kern) upon meeting her future husband.
Blake was especially outstanding on Leiber and Stoller’s “I’m a Woman (W-O-M-A-N),” in which she seemed to step out of character to become a sultry vamp with a hand-on-hip sensuality. In a darker vein, she was particularly moving as she described a night of pain she thought would be her last during a bout with cancer before coming to the realization she had “won the life lottery,” as she put it — illustrated with the prayer-like “Peace” (Michael McDonald/Beth Chapman). That was followed by a self-reflection on the simple satisfactions of living in “Late in Life” (Shelly Markham/Adryan Russ).
She closed the show with Rodgers & Hart’s “My Romance” as an expression of love for her audience — capturing the essence of who Janet Blake is.
Blake had strong support from Shelly Markham as musical director on piano and Tim Emmons on bass.
Category: Cabaret Reviews
