Celia Berk
Love Is Just Sand
The Beach Café, NYC, February 3, 2018
Reviewed by Marilyn Lester for Cabaret Scenes
Photo: Aaron Tomlinson
On a cold winter’s night, Celia Berk’s sunny presence made a trip to the Beach a happy, warming experience. Berk is a richly accomplished performer who’s grown a great deal over her relatively short career on the cabaret stage.
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Her mellow, honeyed sound remains musically impeccable, including superb diction and excellent phrasing. She is a meticulous performer. There’s a sense in that professionalism that every aspect of the show—and its delivery—has been carefully planned out. This quality is a double-edged sword, though: It makes for a polished presentation, but the danger is in unwittingly creating distance between singer and audience, a bent in some of Berk’s earlier shows. Happily, she’s been increasingly at ease on stage and has become consistently more in tune with her audience, opening the door wider to a more intimate connection.
“What’s Your Name (and Will You Marry Me)” (Lew Spence), which she played very directly to the seats, was a delight. In her dedication to her artistry and commitment to excellence, a terrific next step would see Berk moving out of her comfort zone of slow and mid-tempo numbers, adding a bit of swing or foot-tapping groove.
Berk’s musical journey has brought her to a greater depth in interpreting the lyric.
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Familiar numbers, such as “The Folks Who Live on the Hill” (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II) and “Embraceable You” (George and Ira Gershwin) were rich in meaning, while the wit of Francesca Blumenthal was beautifully revealed in “The Party Upstairs” (music by Ronny Whyte).
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Berk has also more fully embraced her talent for comedy and the lighter side of performance. Making an entrance muffled in a winter coat, she launched into “Spring in Manhattan” (Anthony Scibetta/Slice S. Reach), followed by “You Can’t Rush Spring” (Ann Hampton Callaway). The wit was much appreciated. Her renditions of a very early Irving Berlin piece, “Yiddisha Nightingale,” “Such a Wonderful Town” (Hubert “Tex” Arnold/Lew Spence), and her encore “The Broken Record” (Cliff Friend/Charlie Tobias/Boyd Bunch) brought chuckles and laughs and a clear appreciation of the timing and talent it takes to put comedy across. (“Yiddisha Nightingale” also revealed the diva’s ability to sing opera with finesse.
) And as a self-proclaimed “musical truffle hound,” the singer has become expert at sniffing out lesser-known, under-sung, and obscure songs that set her set list apart from the run of the mill. Her choice of “Sand,” a Stephen Sondheim trunk song, not only provided the title of the show, but also cleverly tied into the theme of the venue itself.
Team Berk includes the gifted music director/pianist Alex Rybeck (whose spiffy arrangements brightened each number), and crackerjack director Jeff Harnar.
