American songwriter Burt Bacharach didn’t have to die to have a moment, but he did have to die to get a D.C. cabaret.
Nova Y. Payton, one of Washington’s most beloved theater artists, acknowledged that reality early on in her endearing 90-minute cabaret act, “That’s What Friends Are For.” (The tuneful evening at Arlington’s Signature Theatre runs through Feb. 4.) The singer said she wanted to craft a tribute concert for Bacharach for some time, but couldn’t figure out how to squeeze a cabaret run into her own busy theater schedule. (Her recent engagements included guesting with the National Symphony‘s Holiday Pops.)
Then the esteemed composer died last February, at age 94, after seven decades of songwriting. Signature’s artistic director Matthew Gardiner called Payton and said, “We have to find the time.”
They settled on January 2024, a typically dark period for Washington theaters, and picked 12 songs that should brighten anyone’s midwinter. Though, to be honest, baby boomers who heard Roberta Flack, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick, and others sing Bacharach’s hits in real time may be more enthralled than those of us who have posthumously listened to the canonical highlights.
“I dug deep, y’all,” Payton told the crowd regarding her song selections, apologizing in advance if she and music director Daryl L.A. Hunt had omitted anyone’s favorites. (“Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “The Look of Love” are among Bacharach’s classics that did not make the cut.)
A four-piece band—Hunt on keys, DeAnte Haggerty–Willis on guitar, Michael Bowie on bass, and Carroll V. Dashiell III on drums—opened the show by jamming through a Bacharach medley. When Payton sashayed onstage, it was to ask a rapt audience, “Do you know the way to San Jose?” A disco-ball ring beckoned on her left hand, and a fitted coral dress lured listeners to the swinging West Coast of the 1960s. Lest any audience members thought this evening in an Arlington black-box would be a formal occasion to sit back and listen, Payton immediately asked for a little audience participation.
“Wah-wah-whomp-whomp-wah-wah-wah-wah-wha,” she instructed everyone to echo. “I don’t have backup singers for this show,” she noted. “You’re it.”
Payton also coaxed the crowd into adding oomph to the chorus of “I Say a Little Prayer.” That 1967 chart-topper features the second-most famous “forever and ever” refrain in music history, trailing behind George Frideric Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus. But it’s an unquestionably first-rate example of the success Bacharach and his writing partner Hal David found with Warwick, the pop culture icon who received an overdue Kennedy Center Honor in 2023.
Payton contributed her own tribute to the Warwick oeuvre after singing a slowed-down, ethereal “Walk on By.” A year ago, she shared a car with Warwick en route to a Los Angeles memorial for A&M Records co-founder Jerry Moss (who died five months before Bacharach). Warwick repeatedly overrode the driver’s GPS, insisting that he not “take the freeway” on the way to rehearsal.
“But ma’am, we may be late,” the driver warned.
“They’ll wait,” Warwick coolly retorted.
Payton’s invite to sing at the Moss tribute, which also included artists such as Peter Frampton and Amy Grant, underscores her growing stature as a performer beyond D.C. She’s been a fixture at Signature since the early 2010s, delivering star turns in Dreamgirls, Hairspray, The Color Purple (for which she won a Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Lead Performer), and many more musicals. A 2012 list of “12 Washington Actors We Love to Watch,” from the Washington Post called Payton a tornado in “lipstick and heels.” She has fans, and this cabaret proves she has super fans. (At the Jan. 18 performance that I attended, a boomer couple in matching cable-knit turtlenecks sat at the center table raising glasses to Payton after each number, while a group of women whooped at every opportunity.)
Musical theater skills and cabaret chops are not synonymous, however, and Payton still has some stretching to do. What’s missing from “That’s What Friends Are For” is friendliness, that is, Payton’s personal connection to the material. Instead, she quoted liberally from Bacharach interviews available on YouTube. Her factoids provided helpful context, but audiences expect to leave a cabaret feeling that they’ve grown more intimate with the performer.
On that note, Payton does not deliver. What she does do is continue to set her voice apart as one that can go from breathy jazz to melismatic belt to steady croon, often all in the same song. After a quick-tempo delivery of the titular number from Bacharach’s lone Broadway show Promises, Promises, Payton awkwardly dashed offstage for a hair and costume change, remerging in a black dress and bouffant, perfect for the lover-done-me-wrong classic “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” recorded by Warwick but made famous by Dusty Springfield.
Bacharach was exacting and specific in his writing, but once songs were out there, he “enjoyed hearing other people’s takes on his music,” Payton said. That’s true, but I’m not sure he would be thrilled with every arrangement Hunt devised. He opted to recreate a synthesized brass section on several numbers, but the effect sounded a bit like a kid fooling around with a Casio keyboard circa 1995. With a grand piano and capable musicians onstage, it is better to be creative and use what’s available in the present, not replicate a tinny version of what listeners heard in the past.
Because those recordings will always be there, and Bacharach’s songs will be around for reimaging in years to come.
“I’m so grateful that he has left us with a beautiful catalog of music,” Payton said. Music that is “still relevant today, and will never grow old.”
“That’s What Friends Are For: Nova Y. Payton Sings Burt Bacharach” runs through Feb. 4 at Signature Theatre. sigtheatre.org. $45.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this review misstated Payton’s involvement with the musical Ragtime. She was not in the production. This post has been updated.