The best cabaret performers create the illusion that they are having a conversation with their audience, sometimes confessing weaknesses, sometimes daydreaming. Lack of rehearsal time means that Janie Dee occasionally gives the impression of making up the set list as she goes along. (One of her companions, the guitarist and actor David Shaw-Parker, certainly had to think on his feet when suddenly asked to detour into the theme from Cinema Paradiso.)
Yet as an endlessly versatile actress and singer, Dee wins our trust. She has the resources to draw us into uncharted territory. “This is what cabaret is,” she explained as she arrived on the stage. “It’s not meant to be safe.”
Even she doesn’t always get it right, though. In the first half of the evening, gazing out on to a room full of first-night friends, she was tempted to linger on a few too many stage-door reminiscences. Tales of motherhood and encounters with royalty drifted dangerously close to yummy-mummy territory.
Still, accompanied by the deft pianist Alex Parker, she could be relied upon to snap back on target. Tom Lehrer’s Poisoning Pigeons in the Park was anything but cosy and Dee wrung every drop of wistful humour from Alan Ayckbourn and Paul Todd’s delicious comic ditty about a less-than-immaculate typist. (How long will it be before those Tippex gestures seem almost prehistoric, I wonder?)
A brief appearance by Damian Humbley — Dee’s co-star in the magnificent revival of the Sondheim revue Putting it Together — splashed cold water in our faces: Marry Me a Little has seldom sounded so urgent or despairing. Dee responded with the manic, speaking-in-tongues confessional Getting Married Today. Here is one song in which the occasional fluff can actually add to the emotional charge.
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With Shaw-Parker’s arrival, she wafted through a discreet series of bossa-tinged ballads, including Jardin d’hiver. On This Girl’s in Love With You she even added a fine impersonation of a muted trumpet solo. Whatever next?
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