Meghan Kirk: Out of My Head

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Meghan Kirk

Out of My Head

The Stage at KDHX, St. Louis, MO, September 1, 2017

Reviewed by Chuck Lavazzi for Cabaret Scenes

Meghan Kirk

Assembling a cabaret show is a risky undertaking. More than one nationally renowned artist has discovered that the hard way, producing shows that had me glancing at my watch and wondering when I could order another drink.

At no time during Out of My Head, the latest undertaking from St. Louis’ own Meghan Kirk, did I even think of glancing at my Fitbit. In fact, I have no idea how long the show actually was; I was too busy enjoying it. It was all I could do to remember to jot down a note now and then. If there is such a thing as a perfect, Platonic Ideal of a cabaret evening, it would surely look a lot like this.

When I first reviewed Kirk’s work at the Gaslight Cabaret Festival back in 2015, I called her  “a tremendously talented and charismatic performer.” It’s an assessment I can only repeat now. She remains a classic singing actress with solid vocal technique and the acting chops necessary to inhabit a lyric.

In fact, a sure sense of the theatrical informed every aspect of this show. Kirk and pianist/music director Ron McGowan put together a smart, well-paced evening with an impeccably balanced collection of Great American Songbook standards, numbers from both classic and contemporary musical theater, and pop tunes from Billy Joel and the Carpenters. It was also great to hear the work of contemporary songwriting teams like Goldrich and Heisler and Kooman and Dimond, who craft brilliantly narrative songs that are like little one-act plays.

Kirk’s day career is as a flight attendant on private jets, and so the show began with the a slow, seductive take on the familiar “Fly Me to the Moon” (complete with the rarely heard verse), followed by “Jet Set,” a clever “list song” from Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s stage treatment of the film Catch Me If You Can. The theme of flight returned at the end as she wrapped up with an upbeat encore of “Come Fly with Me,” immediately following a touching performance of the title song.

Tales of travel informed many of the song choices. A reflection on Bangkok’s reputation as a “sex tourism” destination, for example, led to haunting version of Cole Porter’s “Love for Sale” (including a dark verse I had never heard before). A vignette about a romantic misadventure in Ireland introduced Pete St. John’s “The Fields of Athenry” (inspired by that awful event known to the Irish as “The Hunger”), which then served as a segue into “Another Suitcase in Another Hall” from Evita, with backup vocals from local musical theater luminary Ben Nordstrom.

Nordstrom got a brief solo set of his own at that point, consisting of a passionate performance of “Memphis Lives in Me” (David Bryan/Joe DiPietro, from the musical Memphis), followed by a perfectly hilarious rendition of Kooman and Dimond’s absurdist stalker song, “To Excess.” The set was just long enough to offer a nice contrast and just short enough to keep the focus of the evening on Kirk. It was, once again, a perfect choice.

Like many cabaret artists, Kirk used memories of her life, family, and unfortunate romantic choices to unify and organize the show. That “this is my life” approach can be risky — your audience might not find your personal story as interesting as you do, after all.

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But Kirk kept the anecdotes short, entertaining, and focused on the task of providing context for the songs, so her patter never degenerated into the kind of self-referential navel-gazing that sometimes accompanies the approach.

So, yeah, perfect once again.

Kirk’s band was perfection as well, with arrangements by McGowan that were ideally suited to her voice and great work from Ben Wheeler on bass and Aaron Brown on guitar. The balance between vocalists and instrumentalists was excellent, a tribute both to the performers and to the designers of The Stage.

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If you want to know what else Meghan Kirk is up to these days, your best bet is probably to view her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/MeghanAshtonKirk1/). Upcoming events at The Stage can be found at the venue’s ticketfly site (http://www.ticketfly.com/venue/11709-the-stage-at-kdhx/).

Chuck Lavazzi

Chuck Lavazzi is the producer for the arts calendars and senior performing arts critic at 88.1 KDHX, the host of The Cabaret Project’s monthly open mic night, and entirely to blame for the Stage Left blog at stageleft-stlouis.blogspot.com. He’s a member of the Music Critics Association of North America and the St. Louis Theater Circle. Chuck has been an actor, sound designer, and occasional director since roughly the Bronze Age. He has presented his cabaret show Just a Song at Twilight: the Golden Age of Vaudeville, at the Missouri History Museum and the Kranzberg Center.