Carley Dickey
From Carley with Love
The Greenroom 42, NYC, July 30, 2023
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg
Carley Dickey
The lovely blonde soprano Carley Dickey made her New York City debut at The Green Room 42 with a program that consisted mostly of theater and theater-adjacent songs delivered with a very contemporary sound. She has a powerful voice with an extensive range that was undercut that evening by excessive volume that too often blurred her delivery of the lyrics. When things were allowed to quiet down a bit, her theatrical savvy with the words was displayed to great benefit. It must be noted that unlike many young performers in cabaret, she knows how to handle a microphone, never moving it in too close, which simply muddles the voice. Whether director Jackson Pack Walker and/or music director Rebekah Bruce are responsible for this, or its simply the singer’s own instinct, this is a highly laudable skill.
After opening raucously with “Jason’s Song (Gave It Away)”—by Jason Robert Brown—she quickly moved on to salute the musical Wicked with a medley of “Popular” (with some tribute to Kristin Chenoweth’s trick high notes) and a smooth transition into “Defying Gravity.” She shifted into a totally different style for the country/western classic “Crazy,” as a tribute to her parents. She also saluted her sister sopranos Kelli O’Hara with the glorious title number from A Light in the Piazza and Bernadette Peters with a fine performance of the shifting moods of “Everybody Loves Louis” (from Sunday in the Park with George). One of the highlights came when. after a series of dark songs, she launched into a wonderful apology with “Not Funny,” which made the point that lead sopranos don’t often get to sing witty, upbeat songs. Recalling Barbara Cook’s “The Ingenue,” Dickey capped it with the comment that “and now for a few more sad songs.” Good theatrical showmanship.
Dickey was joined by two very talented friends for duets: Esteban Suero on “As Long As You’re Mine” from Wicked and Carly Ann Moore on “In His Eyes” from Jekyll & Hyde. Both numbers were presented with the highly dramatic delivery demanded by the pop/rock style of today’s musicals. Along with the excellent support of Bruce, drummer Christopher McWilliams and bassist Vivi Rama contributed their fine musicianship to the evening.
As the evening went along, Dickey demonstrated her ability to ramin still and quiet and continue to hold the audience’s attention with her delivery of Sondheim’s “Not a Day Goes By.” In her final number, she let go with a lilting version of “So This Is Love” from Disney’s Cinderella, suggesting that she should go further afield in her choice of material to embrace classic Broadway along with the more contemporary numbers that dominated this show. It will be interesting to see where she chooses to go next.
