All right, students: Cabaret Class will now come to order. Our subject today is...well, cabaret class, or elegance in performance. For a fine example, I point you to Anna Bergman and her new show, Wherever Love Takes Me, at the Metropolitan Room. With an opera-trained soprano that she has adapted to intimate salon style; dressed elegantly in a black cocktail dress accenting her beauty; and focusing on her songs to highlight the stories they tell, Anna kept her audience enthralled from beginning to end. Combining American popular and theater songs (Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim, Adam Guettel); humorous contemporary numbers (Christine Lavin and Francesca Blumenthal) and international songs (in German and Italian), Anna kept her program moving neatly, with emphasis on the music, its lyrical qualities, and on the song lyrics themselves.

Her quiet "In the Still of the Night" (Porter), "Starry, Sta'rry Night" (McLean) and even the familiar Sondheim piece, "Send in the Clowns" -- this last sung in a lovely lower register -- brought out the songs' longing qualities, while her final two numbers -- Julie Gold's "The Journey" and David Friedman's "We Can Be Kind" -- offered moving lifts to the spirit. Simplicity in lighting (by Michael Barbieri), in direction (by Eric Michael Gillett) and in the musical arrangements (by Dennis Buck, Alex Rybeck and accompanist Paul Greenwood) all contributed to an example of what top-flight, classy cabaret can be.

Anna returns to the Metropolitan Room Thursday through Saturday, October 18-20.

Peter Haas
Cabaret Scenes
October 11, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org