Robin Westle
In the Summer of ’69
Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, November 10, 2019
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg for Cabaret Scenes
Robin Westle has a delightful personal story to tell, and she tells it so well. The summer of 1969 found her at a summer camp in New York State where she was transitioning from being a child to being a young woman, getting to join the “in crowd” and taking a life-changing field trip to a certain music festival. She told the story with charm and humor, using the songs heard on her transistor radio that summer along with the melodies performed at that little event known as Woodstock. Strong support came from music director Tracy Stark, who also provided vocal backup, bassist Owen Yost, and the light touch of director Eric Michael Gillett.
The flaw in the show was that the star’s stories were far more interesting than her own approach to many of her songs. It’s noticeable that one of her finest performances was of “When I Was a Boy,” a deeply felt delivery of a number written well outside of the time period covered in the show but very apropos to its themes. The song allowed her to show off both her solid dramatic abilities and her assured singing. The opening, “Here Comes the Sun,” was a sweet laid-back moment, buoyed by Westle’s blossoming smile with the lyrical references to “the sun.” But many of the included songs (“White Rabbit,” “Wedding Bell Blues,” “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” “Everybody’s Talkin’”), while very well sung in Westle’s strong controlled voice, were just not emotionally involving. It seems more as though the show relied on the audience’s own personal responses to the numbers.
Wisely, Westle concluded the show with some potent material that she could put her personal stamp on. A medley of “We Shall Overcome” and “I Shall Be Released” (both performed at Woodstock by Joan Baez) and beautifully arranged by Stark, evoked a strong emotional reaction from the audience irrespective of their age. The singer totally invested herself into these songs, as she did with her “encore,” “It’s Getting Better,” which gave an optimistic ending to the evening. Westle involved the audience in her personal story and proved herself capable of doing so with her songs; hopefully, in the future she’ll be able to bring that to more of her chosen numbers.
