The American Songbook in London: Andrea Marcovicci

Published Wednesday 7 February 2007 at 15:55 by Mark Shenton

The art of American cabaret may, like the Broadway stage that it is closely associated with, be something of a fabulous invalid. The plant may be dying but it keeps trying to sprout new leaves. Now singer Jeff Harner is attempting to revitalise its traditions in London by hosting, programming and appearing in a four-week season in the intimate surrounds of Jermyn Street Theatre, neatly turned into a cabaret boite with onstage tables and atmospheric lighting and plants.

The season couldn’t hope for a better advocate - or a more dire warning, depending on your point of view - than cabaret veteran Andrea Marcovicci, who has chalked up an astonishing 20-year run at the premiere venues in New York, LA and San Francisco.

On the one hand, there is hardly anyone in the field with a more ravishing personal presence, or capable of striking such compelling and sophisticated attitudes so effortlessly and smartly, than Marcovicci. She is both scholarly and spunky - a rare combination. And she thinks about her material - in this case a programme of Frank Loesser songs, familiar and unfamiliar - both theatrically and dramatically.

But on the other hand, it’s gained at the expense of their musicality. The voice is so thin and reedy that it seems like her lengthy fingernails are being pulled across a blackboard at times. When she sings one of Loesser’s most tender ballads, If I Were a Bell, I wondered to myself, “If I were a Song/I’d go ding-dong out of here”. But I’m glad that it stayed, and so did I, because she is so full of warmth and wit that the technical deficiencies eventually become forgivable.