Joan Jaffe
Little Girl Blue
Pangea, NYC, August 1, 2019
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg for Cabaret Scenes
The delightful veteran of theater, television, and cabaret, Joan Jaffe, is back with a brand-new show. Intended to be a tribute to “the finest ladies in jazz,” the loosely tied together program feels more like a vaudeville show, with equal time given to her guest performers.
https://firstcanadianpharm.com/wp-content/languages/new/strattera.html
Always entertaining, the evening took some surprising and slightly disjointed turns.
https://firstcanadianpharm.com/wp-content/languages/new/augmentin.html
Kicking the show off with “You Make Me Feel So Young,” Jaffe seemingly declared that age was simply irrelevant. She followed this with a haunting “Midnight Sun” that showed tremendous specificity in her treatment of the lyric. Then came the newest song of the evening, a delightful, salty “Scratch It” (Christopher Morse), very much in the tradition of the kind of number that Pearl Bailey used to toss off with ease, which was a definite high point.
Soon, the songstress was joined on stage by comic actor Charles Baran. After some fun banter and a birthday salute to Baran’s husband, they shifted into vaudeville style for “A Couple of Swells,” delivered with joy. Then the diva yielded the stage to her partner for a clever, politically-tinged monologue and a longing for yesterday with a drolly delivered “Those Were the Good Old Days.
https://firstcanadianpharm.com/wp-content/languages/new/xenical.html
”
After a brief return to the stage to deliver an extremely warm version of “Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe,” she once more yielded the show, this time to her fine music director/pianist Kuni Mikami, a former member of the Lionel Hampton band. Earlier in the evening, he had provided a lush, romantic interlude during “Midnight Sun.
” Now, he dazzled as a jazz virtuoso with a lengthy exploration of “The Entertainer.”
And then a major shift occurred as Jaffee offered up a series of very dark melodies including “Spring Will Really Hang You Up the Most,” “Angel Eyes,” and “Little Girl Blue.” It must be said that the singer found different emotional approaches to each number, ranging from anger to sadness to acceptance, but after the frivolous earlier segment, this seemed a bit of heavy going. Enjoyable as this segment was, a better balance of material would certainly have helped to tie this evening together.
