Theo Bleckmann is a cabaret original. Although no newcomer, the German-born performer first caught this reviewer's attention this past January, presenting German Songs of Love, War, Peace and Exile to an appreciative New York audience at Helen's Hideaway Room. Bleckmann's new show at Joe's Pub, Las Vegas Rhapsody, is as different as a German mark is from an American sawbuck. It's a romantic potpourri of American show tunes accompanied by Fumio Yasuda's piano, two violins, a viola and a cello.

Las Vegas Rhapsody is not a celebration of Sin City. Although he performs in different settings all over the world - this year's schedule will take him to Italy, Germany, Austria, Norway, Sweden and Vietnam - Bleckmann has never been to Las Vegas. However, he declares it's his fantasy: presenting in Las Vegas this show, in which all conventions are suspended and he internationalizes an American tradition to make it his own, with such standards as "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," "We Kiss in a Shadow," "True Love" and "Button Up Your Overcoat."

American show tunes, although accurately describing the songs Bleckmann and Fumio Yasuda, his musical director, have chosen, hardly characterizes what they've done with them. Bleckmann, has a voice as rich and smooth as whipped cream, and often utilizes it as an actual instrument, singing without lyrics, emulating a clarinet or a cello. He also scats and punctuates his vocals with clicks, grunts, putters and shifts into falsetto. Removing the songs from their theatrical story lines allow Bleckmann and Yasuda to offer the collection as a concert, transporting each song far from its more typical interpretations. Las Vegas Rhapsody was as much a presentation of Yasuda's inventive and unusual arranging as it was of Bleckmann's vocalizing. The results were unexpected, fresh, and often exhilarating, and their audience was beside itself cheering them on.

If there's a down side to such an intriguing encounter, it's that after the first three of four numbers, the unusual arrangements and Bleckmann's vocals began to effect a certain sameness, in spite of the variation in his song list. As if the interpretation of the lyrics took a back seat to the search for a highly subjective expression. But perhaps that's a small price to pay in return for a night of creativity and musical imagination. For many, Las Vegas Rhapsody was as much an experience as it was a show.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
April 18, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org