Liz Callaway

Church of the Presidents, Quincy, MA, February 22, 2025

Reviewed by John Amodeo

In a program of well-chosen songs from Broadway, film, and 1960s and 1970s pop, Liz Callaway, with her honeyed voice and her ability to connect with her audience and her material, proved once again what a national treasure she is. Even in a church setting with the audience in pews, Callaway was able to create an instant rapport with every person there She sang and spoke as comfortably to us as though she knew us personally.

She opened with “Something’s Coming” (Leonard Bernstein/Stephen Sondheim from West Side Story). Accompanied by her longtime music director Alex Rybeck, she reimagined the familiar Broadway classic in one of Rybeck’s extraordinary arrangements that deliciously played with the rhythm and harmony. However, the song wasn’t taken beyond recognition thanks to Callaway’s faithful vocal rendition.

Callaway has had a storied Broadway career, which she turned into fascinating patter between songs. She would introduce a song with a tale of getting cast in a show or of her professional relationships with such legendary songwriters as Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, or Andrew Lloyd Webber. Having played Grizabella for five years in the long-running Broadway musical Cats and having played the role of Norma Desmond in a regional-theater production of Sunset Boulevard, Callaway sang an exquisite pairing of Sunset Boulevard’s “A Perfect Year” (Lloyd Webber/Don Black/Christopher Hampton) and “Memory” from Cats (Lloyd Webber). It flowed seamlessly from one song to the other, and “Memory” built to a thrilling crescendo. She also delivered a dramatically poignant “Since You’ve Been Here” (Peter Larson/Josh Rubins) from the 1986 off-Broadway musical Brownstone, in which she starred. The show may have run for only 69 performances, but its lovely score (which thankfully can be heard on the original-cast recording) has some beautiful story songs, of which this was one.

Callaway has many signature songs in her repertoire; the top one is the Oscar-nominated “Journey to the Past” (Stephen Flaherty/Lynn Ahrens) from the 1997 animated film Anastasia, in which Callaway provided the singing voice of Anastasia. She led into that song with another from the film, “Once Upon a December,” a sweet music-box lullaby. Then she went into the strident “Journey to the Past,” and with the help of Rybeck’s lush orchestral playing, she whipped the audience into a frenzy. A final biographical selection was another pairing from her first Broadway show, in which she was cast at the age of 19: the original 1981 production of Merrily We Roll Along (Sondheim). It closed after only 16 performances, but thanks to its mesmerizing score and numerous book rewrites it has found new life in its most recent Broadway revival. Callaway segued beautifully from the optimistic “Old Friends” to the regretful “Like It Was” and sounded especially sweet on the latter.

Callaway performed a few selections from her recent recording, To Steve, With Love: Liz Callaway Celebrates Sondheim, including a fun “Broadway Baby” (Follies) and an even more fun “Another Hundred Lyrics,” a Lauren Mayer parody of “Another Hundred People” from Company. In it, she hilariously lamented challenges of memorizing a Sondheim lyric and marveled the audience with her rapid-fire delivery of the tongue-twisting lyrics. It was a tour de force that I’ve ever seen only Callaway perform because no other singer would dare attempt it.

Callaway delivered a powerful and insightful pairing of “Make Someone Happy” (Jule Styne/Betty Comden & Adolph Green from Do Re Mi) with “Something Wonderful” (Richard Rodgers/Oscar Hammerstein II from The King and I). Her lush and emotive vocals were ably supported by Rybeck’s gorgeous piano playing.

Pop songs have always appealed to Callaway., and her silky-smooth alto and plucky demeanor were perfectly suited to them. She channeled Lesley Gore in “You Don’t Own Me” (John Madara/David White), broke our hearts with a deeply touching “Moon River” (Henry Mancini/Johnny Mercer from Breakfast at Tiffany’s), and cheered us up with a whimsical pairing of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” (Burt Bacharach/Hal David) and “Singin’ in the Rain” (Arthur Freed/Nacio Herb Brown) from the film of the same name.

She tailored her program to the Quincy audience and dedicated a song to a Quincy native who moved out to Los Angeles, married, and had children. Subsequently, he and his family lost their home in the Los Angeles wildfires. A portion of the proceedings from Callaway’s show went to help that family. The song Callaway chose to sing was “Beautiful City” (Stephen Schwartz/John-Michael Tebelak), and to show how spot on this choice was, think of Los Angeles as you read these prophetical lyrics (the city’s name is even mentioned):

“Out of the ruins and rubble
Out of the smoke
Out of the night of struggle
Can we see a ray of hope?
One pale thin ray
Reaching for the day.

We can build a beautiful city
Yes we can
Yes we can
We can build a beautiful city
Not a city of angels
But we can build a city of man.”

You could hear a pin drop during this song’s performance, so still was the audience. There wasn’t dry eye in the house.

Callaway kept with the theme of “hope” in her encore, another of her signature songs that she said always fill her with hope. It was “The Story Goes On” (Richard Maltby, Jr./David Shire from Baby), a Broadway show in which she starred. She sounded every bit as supple and youthful as she did more than 40 years ago and brought the audience to its feet for the third time. John McDonald and JM Productions have now brought Liz Callaway to Quincy twice during the past three years. She has a legion of fans here, and we hope she will become a regular guest artist in this series.