Eileen Barnett
It’s My Birthday and I’ll Sing If I Want To
Catalina Jazz Club, Hollywood, CA, May 7, 2026
Reviewed by Les Traub
For one doing a cabaret show in celebration of a birthday, it would not be out of line to give some leeway for a very indulgent show. Happily, this was not the case with Eileen Barnett’s celebration. She presented a well-balanced show that included entertaining stories about her life and career and songs that were meaningful to her that offered an emotional throughline for the show. The mix of songs were weighted toward the contemporary augmented by with nice selection from the Great American Songbook.
Her opening number, “I Feel So Much Spring” (William Finn from A New Brain), presented a simple, clear optimistic message that set the tone for the evening. Even “Times Are Hard for Dreamers” (Daniel Massé from Amalie) had an optimistic message: “People seem stuck or lost at sea, and I might be a dreamer, but it has gotten me this far, and that is far enough for me.” Even the next number, “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” (Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II) with its loss-of-love message was brushed off with a shrug by Barnett after singing the line “when a lovely flame dies.”
In a brief autobiographical segment Barnett told us about her first job in Chicago at age 15. She joked about envisioning herself as a soprano ingenue but got her first New York job in a Kurt Weill show singing “Surabaya Johnny” (Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht; English lyrics by Marc Blitzstein). Her signature Broadway role was as a replacement playing the wife in the original production of Nine. She recreated her number, “My Husband Makes Movies” (Maury Yeston), with a dramatic and beautifully sung rendition. Musical director Michael Collum provided sensitive support at the piano, as he did throughout the show. From The Light in the Piazza, which she starred in, she served up a poignant “Dividing Day” (Adam Guettel). Later in the show, that song’s line, “I can see the winter in your eyes,” was contrasted with John Wallowitch’s “I See the World Through Your Eyes.”
Anyone who knows Barnett would not be surprised by her mention of dogs during the evening; “Times Like This” (Lynn Ahrens/Stephen Flaherty) provided the opportunity, complete with the relevant message, “At times like this, I sure could use…A dog.” She commented that she first heard it sung by Andrea Marcovicci, whom she acknowledged in the audience.
One indulgence she did claim was to sing songs not intended to be performed by a woman. She delivered her Pretty Women medley of “Pretty Women” (Stephen Sondheim), “Gigi” (Alan Jay Lerner/Frederick Loewe), “Fanny” (Harold Rome), and “Maria” (Leonard Bernstein/Steven Sondheim) with touching simplicity and was a highlight of the show.
She had fun with “The Valley,” a song written for her by that master of special material Billy Barnes. It described this Broadway and Hollywood personality getting married and moving over the hill to the Valley. A change of pace led to a poignant tribute to the husband in that marriage, actor Bruce French, who passed away in 2025.
“My Days” (Ingrid Michaelson from The Notebook) served as an apt reflection of life: “I wanna live a life, Where I’m allowed to say, that I’m, proud of the way that I spent my days.” She effectively built the song to a powerful finish. Bookending the show was another spring song, “You Must Believe in Spring” (Alan and Marilyn Bergman/Michel Legrand), which echoed the optimism of her opening number. Credit is certainly due to director Kirsten Chandler for working with Barnett to shape this seamless, magical evening.
