Amanda McBroom and George Ball's recent show at 54 Below was titled "Some Enchanted Evening: An Evening of Love Songs for Grownups." Even more importantly, this was a cabaret show performed by grownups. McBroom and Ball had last sung together in a club in New York City in 1969. ("He was a child, I was in utero," she joked.) While that 45-year gap clearly has been our loss, it has also given the couple plenty of time to hone their separate and joint performance styles to near perfection. McBroom, of course, has appeared solo locally, most memorably at Rainbow & Stars in the 1990s and more recently at the Metropolitan Room, and the California-based couple has performed together elsewhere, including this show in Los Angeles and London. It seems inadequate to merely welcome them back to New York after all these decades, and to wish they could stay a while longer.
McBroom and Ball appeared to set the tone for the evening by starting off with a duet of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "Twin Soliloquies" ("Born on opposite sides of the sea…") from South Pacific, leading into a truncated Ball solo on that show's big love song, "Some Enchanted Evening." But McBroom soon halted this projected venture down sentimentality lane with a pointed spoken criticism of her husband's chosen and decidedly down-market costume for the evening: faded dungarees, a black polo shirt and a brown jacket. With her in a decidedly chicer black pantsuit with red lapels, the couple then sang and warily danced their actual take on longtime marital involvement, Sondheim's "The Little Things You Do Together," (featuring the line "It's not so hard to be married/it's much the simplest of crimes."
What allowed them to move fluidly around onstage was the fact that there were only two musicians backing them, but what musicians they were! Proving that an eclectic program can be beautifully bolstered by just two instrumentalists were Michele Brourman, the pianist who has been with McBroom almost as long as Ball has, and on double bass, Jered Egan, who had been recruited for the second show in this run just three days earlier. Both also effectively provided backup singing when called on.
Ball and McBroom also moved seamlessly among a varied and sometimes surprising 16-song list (not a Cole Porter selection on it!) It would have been remiss of them not to include several McBroom compositions, among them her hauntingly lovely "Ship in a Bottle," in which she extols a preference for breaking out: "I'll take my chances on the wind and the sea." Ball's aptly growly baritone demonstrated strength and nuance in four disparate solos: "Highway Patrolman," Bruce Springsteen's paean to brotherly love; the wistful "September Song" (Kurt Weill, Maxwell Anderson), which in Walter Huston's recording inspired a 17-year-old Ball to become a singer; a slightly slower version of the old Drifters hit "Save the Last Dance for Me" (Doc Pomus, Mort Shuman); and Jacques Brel's "Amsterdam" (English lyrics by Shuman).
The couple met appearing in a San Francisco pre-Off Broadway production of Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Brel not only remains a favorite composer of theirs, McBroom calls him "the person who taught me to write music." Fittingly, the program included four Brel songs. In addition to "Amsterdam," Ball and McBroom combined on an exuberant version of "You Don't Forget the Past" and on Brel's most romantic tribute to long-term love, "La chanson des vieux amants" (English lyrics by McBroom), and McBroom took one more ride on the song "I was sure I was never going to do again": "Carousel" (English lyrics by Eric Blau).
Inevitably, perhaps, McBroom closed the show with her best-known song, "The Rose," whose lyrics apply to multiple aspects of love. But this time Brourman provided lovely backup singing on the first half of the song, and Ball contributed to a full-on duet in the second half, adding up to something almost like hearing the song for the first time.
Of course there was an encore for this couple who claims, "Sometimes we go for days speaking only in show tunes." It was time for "Love Is Here to Stay" (George and Ira Gershwin). If only this show were here to stay, at least for a bit.
"Some Enchanted Evening: An Evening of Love Songs for Grownups"
54 Below – October 8, 14
