Kate Baldwin
How Did You Get This Number?
Feinstein’s/54 Below, NYC, October 18, 2018
Reviewed by Randolph B. Eigenbrode for Cabaret Scenes
Kate BaldwinNever underestimate Kate Baldwin’s voice. More of a creamy concoction, her ravishing tone is matched only by her dexterity and precision. Put best, this redhead is a vocal virtuoso.
Yet, what’s always separated Baldwin from her soprano contemporaries is her uncanny capacity for character embodiment, and she jumps in with reckless abandon. Starting with “Look What Happened to Mabel” (Jerry Herman), full of ambitious vim, her characters don’t just grow over the course of a song, they evolve.
And no performer in recent memory expresses such a haunting magnetism like Baldwin. A pairing of “Look to the Rainbow” and “How are Things in Glocca Mora” (Burton Lane/E.Y. Harburg)—both from Finian’s Rainbow, in which she starred on Broadway—deftly reverberated with contradicting forces, finally landing on hopeful melancholy. It’s pieces like these that feel tailor-made for her.
But about 45 minutes into the 80-minute program, the sails lost their wind.
Ballad after ballad, mostly in the contemporary musical theater vein, dragged the previously jolly pacing, and Baldwin’s allure felt strained. A piece like “A Stranger” (Michael John LaChiusa), with its unexpected tonal shifts, allows her to showcase those deft acting chops, but somehow we also lose the charm along the way.
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Yet, she finished strong with “Theme from New York, New York” (John Kander/Fred Ebb). Building from an almost whispered start to a raucously razzmatazz finish, Baldwin finally ditched the quiet and reserve for a climax worth of her tremendous abilities. And, indeed, she satisfies.
