Maude Maggart
Tom Rolla’s Gardenia, West Hollywood, CA, May 24, 2019
Reviewed by Les Traub for Cabaret Scenes
It has been over a year since Maude Maggart last appeared at the Gardenia, with one-year-old Winifred commanding her attention during that time. But it was as if she had never taken a pause from performing; her voice was as dreamy as ever. Her voice has always sat comfortably in material written from 1900 to 1930, and an emphasis on those songs provided wit and even relevance. Consider her George M. Cohan opener from 1904, “Life’s a Very Funny Proposition After All”: ‘Everybody’s fighting as we wend our way along/Every fellow claims the other fellow’s in the wrong.” Maggart remarked that the show wouldn’t all be doom and gloom, and she proved that by following with “The Heather on the Hill” (Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe) paired with “We’ll Gather Lilacs in the Spring” (Ivor Novello). With an arm outstretched and her fingers waving as if “The mornin’ dew is blinking yonder,” she left no doubt she was seeing that heather (and so were we) and gave as pure and beautiful a performance as one is likely to hear.
While there was no particular theme to the show, it did reflect her love for the Gardenia as she related her history with the club: as the place where she was brought as a 16-year-old to see Andrea Marcovicci and Marshall Barer; the place of her first solo cabaret show about 18 years ago; the place where she met her husband, David Lucky, at a Gardenia Open Mic; and it was also where he proposed to her. She sang a moving tribute to the late Tom Rolla of the Gardenia with “Let the Rest of the World Go By” (J. Keirn Brennan/Ernest R. Ball). A nod to mentor Barer was her delightful rendition of his Rodgers & Hammerstein send up “Succotash Fair.” Lucky and Maggart had fun dueting on “Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon” (Irving Berlin), with some updated additional lyrics by Lucky himself.
Her musical partner, pianist John Boswell, offered arrangements that blended seamlessly with Maggart’s exquisite voice.
