Marissa Mulder: Instincts

Joel Benjamin | July 23, 2015

Marissa Mulder

Instincts

Metropolitan Room, NYC, July 16, 2015

Reviewed by Joel Benjamin for Cabaret Scenes

2014 MAC Award winner Marissa Mulder’s Instincts at the Metropolitan Room was full of emotional complexity with optimism winning out in the end.

Mulder’s voice has a sweet, girlish quality. Make no mistake about it, she finds astonishing colors in that sweetness, sometimes even surprising herself.

Instincts is an emotional X-ray of her life, beginning with the lovely and slow “Hands in My Pocket” (Alanis Morissette/Glen Ballard), an expression of contentment. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” (Elton John/Bernie Taupin) became a quiet meditation with an underlying, low-key howl threatening to emerge. When she turned to an upbeat reading of “You Fascinate Me So” (Cy Coleman/Carolyn Leigh), she somehow found a way to twist the lyrics to imply naughtiness.

Two songs, sung in sequence, illuminated each other. John D. Loudermilk’s “Turn Me On” and Sondheim’s “Losing My Mind” are both about sexual obsession, the first about a woman awaiting her lover and the second bemoaning her fixation. Mulder’s interpretations were more down to earth and more haunting than most.

She came closest to the wide-eyed child imbued in her voice with Sondheim’s “I Remember” in memory of her grandpa.

Her final two songs were revealing in different ways. “Beautiful” (Carole King) was a shout-out to her side career as a nanny, somehow sad, while “Take It with Me” (Tom Waits) was a bittersweet song of leaving love behind, somehow happy.

The show leaned a bit heavily toward darker themes for such a young artist. Despite proclaiming that she “can’t do” upbeat songs, the brightness of her voice would be perfect for lighter fare.

Her musical director, Nate Buccieri, was her enthusiastic partner, his piano playing supporting her every nuance. An interesting note: Buccieri is the first M.D. that I know of who played the entire show off an iPad, no sheet music in sight.

Tags: Alanis Morissette, American Songbook, Beautiful, Bernie Taupin, Broadway Musicals, Cabaret, Cabaret Reviews, Cabaret Scenes, Carole King, Carolyn Leigh, Clubs, Composers, Cy Coleman, Elton John, Glen Ballard, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Great American Songbook, Hands in My Pocket, I Remember, Instincts, iPad, Jazz, Joel Benjamin, John D. Loudermilk, Losing My Mind, lyricists, MAC Award, Marissa Mulder, Metropolitan Room, Musicals, Nightclubs, NYC, Popular Song, Revues, Show Tunes, Singers, Sondheim, Songbook, Standards, Supper Clubs, Take It with Me, Tom Waits, Turn Me On, Venues, Vocalists, You Fascinate Me So