Suzanne Tanner's Beyond Me: A Song Cycle in the Key of Survival, is a solo effort and it is not. It is very much a collaboration on the stage at Theatre Row, and of an extremely intimate nature. Tanner presents, in multimedia and relying on extensive interview footage of Rachel Goldman Miller, a musical interpretation of Miller's life story. Rachel speaks, Tanner listens, and then the episodes and internal experiences are translated into song. Translation in fact defines the evening; it is all about interpretation, intended to add - or expose - deeper feeling than the narrative provides, and widen the impact of the subject's history.

Tanner succeeds, and beautifully, when her songs actually dig into experience and offer perspectives beyond even the pain and intensity of Rachel's tragedies. A young girl during the Nazi occupation of Paris, Miller lost her family to the camps, and Tanner's evocation of Miller waiting for her sister to join her in country safety ("Dear Sabine") is just plain heartbreaking. More so is the drama surrounding Sabine's potential salvation through a German soldier's falling in love with her. And to marvelous effect, the young Rachel's confusion in needing to pray to a Catholic God - her security demanded a Christian identity - is here a charming kind of rag. Less successful are the songs interpreting Miller's journey to America, devotion to the husband she finds there, and love for her child eventually dying of AIDS. The problem? Miller's words have too much impact on their own, and as a result the songs undercut, rather than amplify, the authentic emotion. At these times, Miller's story as told by herself is immensely powerful by virtue of restraint - Tanner's songs try to expand but are, unfortunately, redundant and sentimental. Would that she sought different perspectives, as in the earlier interpretations.

Let it be said that Tanner's voice is strong and skilled, and it is clear that her being is invested in this emotional partnership with Miller. Nonetheless, you long for less, and there is the sense that she does not fully appreciate the presence of Miller as her partner, even as she so completely gives herself to empathy with her.

Beyond Me is presented as part of the United Solo Theatre Festival, which continues through November 23. For more information and tickets, visit https://unitedsolo.org/