Sharon McNight: Alive and Well at The Duplex!

Sharon McNight

Alive and Well at The Duplex!

The Duplex, NYC, July 28, 2015

Reviewed by Joel Benjamin for Cabaret Scenes

Sharon McNight seems to revel in her bawdiness. To be fair, it’s not a façade. She’s tough, bigger-than-life and a tad foul-mouthed, but underneath this surface is a complex, intelligent, emotionally rich artist whose every song—comic or bluesy—reveals many levels of emotion. She sings as if each song is her autobiography.

She opened her Alive and Well at The Duplex! with Shel Silverstein’s country/western tinged “Queen of the Silver Dollar,” giving life to the bittersweet story of a woman whose life exists only in the titular honky-tonk. She found all the irony in Bob Dorough and Fran Landesman’s “Small Day Tomorrow,” leading directly to Amanda McBroom’s bluesy lament, “It’s Gonna Be One of Those Days,” in which everything that could go wrong does.

McNight’s between-song patter included talk about her sex life, light-hearted diatribes against the idiots in her life, and a sweet, loving tribute to her close friend, the late Julie Wilson.

Mary Liz McNamara’s “Haiku” twisted this delicate form of poetry into a very funny tale of a writer too lazy or busy to write a novel, who instead turned everyday awfulness into 17-syllable bits of philosophy. Janis Ian came in for the McNight treatment in two songs. The first, the darkly sad “Jesse,” was somehow combined with the schlocky German folksong “Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen.” The second was “I’m Still Standing Here,” a powerful statement about claiming one’s life for what it is.

The encore, Craig Carnelia’s “The Kid Inside,” was a heartbreaking look back at the first, stumbling attempts at romance. You could hear the longing in her voice and see it in her eyes.

Ian Herman was her solid, witty musical director/pianist, providing a solid base for McNight’s soaring emotional flights.

Sharon McNight has two more shows at The Duplex: August 4^th and 11^th.

Tags: Alive and Well at The Duplex!, Amanda McBroom, American Songbook, Bob Dorough, Broadway Musicals, Cabaret, Cabaret Reviews, Cabaret Scenes, Clubs, Composers, Craig Carnelia, Du du liegst mir im Herzen, Fran Landesman, Great American Songbook, Haiku, I’m Still Standing Here, Ian Herman, It’s Gonna Be One of Those Days, Janis Ian, Jazz, Jesse, Joel Benjamin, Julie Wilson, lyricists, Mary Liz McNamara, Musicals, Nightclubs, NYC, Popular Song, Queen of the Silver Dollar, Revues, Sharon McNight, Shel Silverstein, Show Tunes, Singers, Small Day Tomorrow, Songbook, Standards, Supper Clubs, The Duplex, The Kid Inside, Venues, Vocalists

Category: Cabaret Reviews, New York City, New York City Cabaret Reviews