Sarah Rice
Music of the Night
Pangea, NYC, September 20, 2016
Reviewed by Ron Forman for Cabaret Scenes
Just watching Sarah Rice play the Theremin is a visual delight. The Theremin is the only musical instrument played without the musician touching it.
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Rice’s hands move over it and, almost magically, sound is produced. The sound, while a bit eerie at first, becomes more and more beautiful as the show proceeds, often mirroring a human voice.
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The combination of the sound of the Theremin with Rice’s truly spectacular soprano voice made this show one of the most memorable that I have witnessed and heard in many years. The intimacy of Pangea made it the perfect venue to witness the performance of musical numbers chosen from the classics, Broadway, movie soundtracks and the international songbook.
The opening number, “Belle nuit, ô nuit d’amour”(Jacques Offenbach), had me believing at first that Rice was part of a duet, when in fact the second voice was the Theremin. Rice’s soprano soared on the especially beautiful aria “O Mio Babbino Caro” (Giacomo Puccini) with her Theremin sounding like a soprano background singer. In a vocal tribute to the late Dana Lorge, Rice— with cigarette in her mouth-performed ”Love’s Cigarette,” a love song to a cigarette.
Guest vocalist David Vernon’s ethereal sound, worked perfectly with the equally ethereal sound of the Theremin and Rice’s thrilling voice, on the medley “Scarborough Fair”/”Canticle.” Somehow, amazingly, I was fooled once again, when I thought that pianist Eric Sedgewick had joined Rice in singing “The Phantom of the Opera” and “The Music of the Night, when in fact Rice amazingly made the Theremin sound like a male voice. Her dramatic facials made her performance of Irving Berlin’s “Supper Time” an emotionally draining experience. Her closing number, “Not While I’m Around,” sung softly, was from a show that she had co-starred in, in the original Broadway cast: Sweeney Todd. The encore was a peaceful “Sleep Song.”
