Melanie Long
An American Voice–Live
The Green Room 42, NYC, May 15, 2026
Reviewed by Bart Greenberg
The very elegant Melanie Long celebrated the release of her debut album with a similarly titled show, An American Voice–Live, at The Green Room 42. In collaboration with her music director/accompanist Seth Weinstein, she paid tribute to 13 American songwriters of various generations. She has a glorious soprano voice (at times it evoked the late Rebecca Luker), a fine sense of drama and interpretation (her take on Stephen Schwartz’s “Meadowlark” was a sensitive and intelligent venture), and a surprising sense of humor. And oh, did she need a director.
The material she chose was wide ranging in style and the time they were written. From the lush operetta melodies of “The Desert Song” (Sigmund Rombert/Oscar Hammerstein II/Otto Harbach/Frank Mandel) to the wry humor of “To Keep My Love Alive” (Richard Rodgers/Lorenze Hart) to the “Dove Aria” (Tobias Picker/Gene Scheer) from the modern opera Therese Raquin, Long moved comfortably from genre to genre. She also demonstrated her depth as an actress by imbuing each character with great individuality and specificity. Long has an extensive theater background. From her first musical theater role, she recreated a delightful “The Miller’s Son” (Stephen Sondheim), spitting out the multitude of lyrics with absolute clarity.
It was surprising that she tackled her show without a director. One issue was that the second half of the program was almost exclusively dark numbers, without variety, until she woke things up with her encore of “Strip Polka” (Johnny Mercer), complete with a Rita Hayworth glove strip tease. The more important issue was that she almost never left center stage. Her mic stand was never moved; it might as well as have been nailed to the floor. The Green Room 42 has a wide stage (at least, as far as New York City cabaret rooms go) with the audience is spread out from side to side, but she never took advantage of it. She did move upstage to a darkened section to retrieve a variety of head gear she relied on to vary the stage picture, but that hardly added action to the stage. It was very frustrating.
Long is a major talent. Her “Trouble Man” (Kurt Weill/Maxwell Anderson) was a classic example of torch done brilliantly, and “The Flagmaker–1775” (Jason Robert Brown) was powerful and moving. She needed to rely on an experienced cabaret director to rise to the top.
