Arriane Alexander has a lot going for her: stunning good looks, a voluptuous figure, a winning stage personality and a terrific repertoire, plus a strong, pleasant voice that exudes enormous energy and pizzazz. She describes herself as a “cabaret entertainer,” and she was certainly entertaining as she wove her way through a set of mostly amusing songs about relationships.

Alexander just finished a stint as one of twenty-four bachelorettes on Fox-TV’s More to Love, and that experience provided adequate fodder for her between-songs patter and put each number into a definite autobiographical context: the idea of doing the show despite lifelong body issues she thought she had overcome; the bitchiness of other contestants; and her ultimate rejection by Luke, the bachelor — which wasn’t’ so bad, she acknowledged, because she felt they had little in common.

Having attained a height of 5 feet 10 inches at age thirteen, Alexander said she has dealt with body-size issues all her life but opted to participate in the TV show “because you have just one self, and you have to start living your life” — leading into a strong rendition of “Big, Blonde and Beautiful” from Hairspray (Marc Shaiman/Scott Whittman). When she described the moment Luke kicked her off the TV show, she used “Marry for Money” (James Melton/Dave Turnbull) to illustrate one possible alternative, then sang a hilarious parody of Maltby & Shire’s “I Don’t Remember Christmas” — retitlted “I Don’t Remember Purim,” about her almost-romance with an Israeli suitor (sample lyrics:  “Was my Chanukah so special?/Did that big menorah burn?/Well, I guess I must have dreamt you/’Cause my dreidel didn’t turn.”)

To illustrate the moment she had to reveal herself in a bikini on national television, Alexander sang “If I’m Tarzan, You’re Jane” (Michael Jay/Greg Smith) — starting out coyly, then strutting her stuff and ultimately pounding her chest, ending the song with a primal scream.

She sang a pair of clever songs by Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich back-to-back: circling bass player Eric Holden as if he were prey in a sexy, funny (I can’t get enough of your) "Boom Boom,” then describing a woman who wants last night’s lover to leave (“The Morning After”) before the romance gets too serious, until changing her tune when he ultimately decides to go. She also scored on a couple of ballads: “No Man at All” (Lindy Robbins/Gerald Stenbach) and, particularly, Alanis Morisette’s sweet “Everything,” a paean to one’s own self worth.

Alexander encored with a hilarous song called “Blow Me” (Richard Kraft/Tom Stern/ David Goldsmith), where each line started with a sexual innuendo that turned out to be not sexual at all once the line was completed (sample lyric: “Blow me … a kiss from across the room/Suck me … in with your charms.”)

The show was directed by Clifford Bell, with musical director David Scott Cohen on keyboards, Holden on bass and guitar and Denise (Delish) Fraser on drums.

Elliot Zwiebach
Cabaret Scenes
August 15, 2009
www.cabaretscenes.org