Christine Andreas

Two for the Road

Café Carlyle, NYC, April 18, 2023

Reviewed by Alix Cohen

Broadway Baby Christine Andreas has adapted to cabaret and concert stages as though she had been doing it all along. Elegance, authority, enunciation, vocal control, and story awareness have always been signatures of this performer—and oh, that radiant voice! The artist and her husband/MD/pianist/composer Martin Silvestri loosely framed this show around their joint travels, “31 years of musical meanderings, many newly minted.”

Singing as she wended her way to the stage, Andreas offered Frank Wildhorn and Nan Knighton’s waltzy “Storybook” in English and French. There’s a phrase, a turning point in every song, she told us, where it takes off. It’s her favorite moment; notes unfurled. “Fly Me to the Moon” (Bart Howard) began gauzy, soared, then retreated, a dramatic formula she almost consistently applied tonight. “My Heart Stood Still” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart) emerged as a caress.

An anecdote about Andreas’ first cabaret performance, also the first time she had worked with Silvestri, found them in the White House at the behest of President George W. Bush. After an encore, he wanted still more. The pair, who had met and developed the show from scratch over prior months, had nothing prepared. Silvestri, having seen her in My Fair Lady, rescued the day with “I Could Have Danced All Night” (Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe). The phrases soared and her soprano was powerful, exuberant, and no longer innocent.

At first, she was against the inclusion of country artist Clint Black’s “Something That We Do” (Black/Skip Ewing)—“I don’t do twang,” she told Silvestri. But Andreas discovered a fit: “We give ourselves, we give our all/Love isn’t someplace that we fall/It’s something that we do” she sang with careworn tenderness. The accompaniment seemed to weave through the song in musical figure eights.
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The Howard Dietz/Arthur Schwartz “Rhode Island Is Famous for You” became a nod to the territory covered in their travels. A duet was playful and charming. (Every selection fit this evening, except a Gershwin medley that veered from its through line.)

The artist met Sammy Cahn while she was performing in his Words and Music. “He was this high—she indicated someone perhaps over four feet tall—“but had an ego to make up for it and told great stories.” She affectionately imitated him.
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His “Teach Me Tonight” (written with Gene DePaul) was breathy, but not naïve. The songs changed with experience. Never a wispy sort of ingenue, Andreas imbues her work with different colors these days, making them relatable on perhaps a more personal level.

“London played an important part in our lives,” she told us. Staying there after one of Silvestri’s own shows closed, she recorded her first solo CD. Her rendition of “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” (Manning Sherwin/Eric Maschwitz) conjured up a 1940s film. The piano intermittently twittered; it was just beautiful. A sentimental “Moon River” bookended “Two for the Road” (both by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer). Andreas stood next to her husband and showed warmth and solidarity.

According to Silvestri, his song “Love Is Good” was penned 25 years before he met Andreas to whom he gifted it, recognizing Kismet. It exuded a kind of dignified gravitas. (English lyrics by Tony Tanner; French lyrics by Nancy Mariana Brucker and Linda Cahill.) “Memory is imperfect but sweeter because of it” introduced a duet on Lerner and Loewe’s “I Remember It Well” with a dash of ersatz Maurice Chevalier.

“I Love Paris” (Cole Porter) and “La Vie en rose” (Louiguy/Edith Piaf), the latter on Andreas’ latest CD, allowed for natural theatricality and a Francophile heart-free rein. That ebullience extended to “She Loves Me” (here, “He Love Me” (Jerry Bock/Sheldon Harnick) during which Silvestri bounced and Andreas sparkled. This was an urbane evening presented by a gifted, polished artist along with a symbiotic collaborator.

Cafe Carlyle is a treat; it’s an old school hotel venue with attentive service.