Richard Holbrook
Richard Sings Rodgers with a Lot of Heart
Metropolitan Room, NYC, March 14, 2016
Reviewed by Peter Haas for Cabaret Scenes
Richard Rodgers had a long, prolific career as a composer, creating the music for more than 900 popular songs and over 40 Broadway, film and television productions. Rodgers’ collaborations with the lyricists Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II were explored by Richard Holbrook in a comprehensive and charming cabaret tribute, presented to a full house at the Metropolitan Room.
Holbrook, in fine voice and dapper in black tie, delivered a strong show of some 30 songs, weaving them together with a well-researched recap of Rodgers’ career. When Rodgers was writing with Hart, Holbrook pointed out, the music came first, the lyrics second.
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From their early musical comedy success, A Connecticut Yankee, Holbrook offered the still popular “My Heart Stood Still,” while other hits included “Isn’t It Romantic?,” “Mimi” (which Holbrook sang delightfully in the style of Maurice Chevalier), and such other Rodgers and Hart classics as “It’s Easy to Remember” (written for Bing Crosby), “Johnny One Note,” “Have You Met Miss Jones?
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” and “Lover.”
Rodgers then teamed with Oscar Hammerstein II, creating the scores—lyrics first—for such ground-breaking shows as Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific and, written while Hammerstein was in failing health, The Sound of Music. It contained the last song they created together, “Edelweiss.”
Following a bow to another of Rodgers’ collaborators, Stephen Sondheim (“Do I Hear a Waltz?”), Holbrook, removing his tie, enacted the part of Carousel’s Billy Bigelow to close the show with a strongly sung “Soliloquy.”
Top-flight musical support was delivered throughout by the smooth Tom Nelson Trio, headed by Nelson on piano, with Tom Kirschmer on bass and Peter Grant on drums.
