After a decade's absence, Heather Villaescusa returns to the New York cabaret scene with "What I Did for Love" at Don't Tell Mama. The show—no big surprise—focuses on matters of the heart. (Isn't a cabaret performance that doesn't deal with love-related themes something of a rare bird—perhaps even a dodo or passenger pigeon?) Villaescusa wisely looks beyond the merely romantic to touch on all sorts of human passions, including some not-so-benign ones. Directed by Lennie Watts, the show is one of the most emotionally rewarding cabaret offerings I've seen and heard this year.
There's a warm, bright, and playful quality to Villaescusa's persona. As for her singing voice, most of the time it has a soft, flute-like quality, but there's a kind of grainy edge to it at times that lends it some welcome character.
She builds the largely autobiographical show gradually. She starts with "I Believe in Love" (Kenny Loggins, Marilyn and Alan Bergman) from the 1976 film A Star Is Born. It's a bit cheeky to lead with a cover of a number strongly identified with Barbra Streisand, but Villaescusa brings a jaunty, welcoming quality to the song—and her winsome backup singers, Rachel Hanser and Cristina Doikos, add pleasing harmonies. It's a nice start, but it gives only a hint of the lovely things to come.
She follows with Livingston and Evans's "Stuff Like That There." Her slow, throbbing-voiced reading of the verse gives way to a boogie-woogie-ish big-band sound on the chorus. Interpolated into the number are spoken comic anecdotes about the adolescent Villaescusa's disasters and successes in the romance department. Afterward, she describes with comedic flair how she found the nerve to stand up to (and leave) an emotionally abusive fiancé, delivering a punchy "King of Anything" (Sara Bareilles).
The singer changes gears with a three-song exploration of passion of the professional sort: namely, her love for her chosen career as a performing artist. She starts the sequence with a bright and beautifully acted rendition of Jason Robert Brown's "Audition Sequence" from The Last Five Years—alternating between bouts of doubt and determination. This leads to the inevitable anthem of the dogged showbiz aspirant, "On Broadway" (Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Leiber & Stoller). Finally she gives us Joe Iconis's "Broadway Here I Come." Near the end of this song Villaescusa's arms rise slowly like spreading wings. It's as if she's awakening to her own resiliency, and is almost startled by it.
One of this singer's strengths is the ability to make delicate transitions between very different sorts of moods. She sings a frantic comic medley that describes her addiction to chocolate and other sugary treats, during which she indulges in some silly shtick with her pianist and musical director, Steven Ray Watkins, and her other talented musicians (bassist Dan Fabricatore and drummer Tim Lykins). But she uses the number also as a portal into a dead-serious meditation on addiction, in which she tells of her late mother's alcoholism and sings deeply felt but unsentimental versions of "Love Hurts" (Boudleaux Bryant) and "Evaporated" (Ben Folds). Even more impressive, she makes another smooth segue back into comic mode for Sondheim's "Live Alone and Like It."
At the opening-night performance of the show, Villaescusa brought her husband, singer Jay Haddad, onstage mid-set for some music and banter that brought to mind the interplay between Sonny and Cher on their early-1970s TV variety hour. This bit could have been schlocky, but the two are full of loopy adoration for each other, and they had tremendous fun singing a rousing version of "This Will Be" (Chuck Jackson, Marvin Yancy). It seems a sort of magical blessing that these two charmingly offbeat and upbeat people found each other.
Among the highlights from the very enjoyable final third of the show are a slow and quiet version of Carole King's "Beautiful" with some gorgeous playing by Watkins, as well as a solid rendition of the evening's title song, "What I Did for Love" (Marvin Hamlisch, Edward Kleban) that benefits from a sly and slightly funky arrangement that lends the anthemic number a refreshing new perspective.
Manhattan's cabaret community is more than fortunate that Villaescusa has ended her cabaret-singing moratorium with this joyful return. I sincerely hope this is not just a spectacular one-off engagement. This performer's grace and authenticity are valuable gifts—ones that, with luck, will keep on giving in the coming years.
"What I Did for Love"
Don't Tell Mama – September 12, 20, 30
