Love—you impossible thing! Elusive? Obviously. But sometimes you can also be slippery even to define. Your borders are often blurry and difficult to trace.

Andrea Axelrod explores this particular conundrum in her new show at the Metropolitan Room: "Almost Like Being in Love (songs on the cusp of love)." She covers a variety of scenarios that are "sort of love" but not quite: relationships that may someday blossom into love but are currently still in the bud; relationships that will always remain in the "not quite love" category; intense but unrequited crushes; deep platonic relationships that may be more significant than those that get physical.

I saw the opening-night performance and enjoyed it. My guess is that it will get even better as Axelrod relaxes fully into her performance. She connects both with the material and with her audience. Her often-witty spoken observations are listenable (though her patter might benefit from some judicious trimming). There are several lovely moments. One likeable early song sequence begins with Frank Loesser's "I'll Know," then introduces a mash-up of Rodgers and Hart's "Blue Room" and Lerner and Loewe's "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" It's clever and thoughtful. Axelrod's strengths are numerous and her weaknesses few; however, partway into the show, I scribbled on my notepad: "Where are the surprises?"

Something unexpected did arrive with "Catalogue Woman" (Forman Brown), a song written for Elsa Lanchester that deals with the mail-order-bride trade (something Axelrod compared to modern dating sites). I found the song drab, but other listeners clearly warmed to it.

But then—and it's a big "but then"—came the kind of surprise I was hoping for. Axelrod introduced a song about another near-love situation—namely, rampant lust. "Turn On the Heat" (DeSylva, Brown, & Henderson, from the 1929 musical film Sunny Side Up) is about stoking romantic fires while living in frigid climes, but here, re-imagined as a rambunctious, broadly comic Yiddish-dialect number, it becomes the sort of turn that would have served Fanny Brice well in her Ziegfeld Follies heyday. Axelrod seemed to grow much more centered and comfortable during this number. She followed it immediately with another success: an ambitious rendering of "A Bar on the Piccola Marina." She had a ball relating Noël Coward's tale of the sexual emancipation of a suddenly merry widow.

The singer's particular vocal characteristics are well suited to both "Turn On the Heat" and "Piccola Marina." She appears to have two voices: a mellow, conversational lower register and a powerful, "legit"-sounding upper range in which she blasts high notes with operatic force. Sometimes, as in these comedic songs, the two voices fuse nicely. But elsewhere—in Terry Shand and Jimmy Eaton's "I Double Dare You," for instance—they seem to be in a bit of a duel. It all hinges on the nature of the song. On a quiet ballad such as Ivor Novello and Eddie Moore's "The Land of Might-Have-Been," she is able to smooth over any jagged vocal seams, sounding tender and wistful.

She may want to rethink the large number of medleys in the show. Sometimes, as with the aforementioned "Blue Room"/"Loverly" combo, they work out well. Less effective is her pairing of Sondheim's "Old Friends" and Randy Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me." The two numbers match thematically, but they are not a perfect blend when it comes to melody and rhythm. Generally speaking, repeatedly alternating sections of paired songs can be awkward; sometimes it's better just to perform both songs all the way through, back to back.

In the show's "plus" column is the presence of musical director Barry Levitt on piano and Jon Burr on bass. I especially liked the jazz-infused instrumental interlude on Rodgers & Hart's "Falling in Love with Love" (which is spliced with Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn's "I Fall in Love Too Easily").

"Almost Like Being in Love (songs on the cusp of love)"
Metropolitan Room  –  June 20, July 7, September 8, October 30