Press Releases and Show Reviews

Cabaret Scenes Review

By: Peter Levy
CABARET SCENES

What's more sensible than a nine-month-pregnant mom-to-be building her cabaret show about new life and the impending event? Opening, most appropriately, with a rhythmic Somethin's Comin', Reagan Stone is a bundle of bliss, bursting (almost literally) with anticipation, joy, hope and optimism.

Reagan has a lot going for her. She's as cute as a button with a turned-up nose to match (she does express a quick wish for her baby to have her nose, but her husband's thighs). She is strikingly attractive, personable, and gifted with a rich voice that she handles with impressive ease. While she does a credible job with a couple of amusing numbers—I Was Born to Entertain, done as a preschooler wearing an oversized pink bow on her head, and Bigger is Better—the most moving moments of the show are her hymns to her unborn child, Sondheim's (No One's Gonna Harm You), Not While I'm Around and Maury Yeston's New Words. An unexpected pleasure is the inclusion of What a Beautiful Night and Smiling in Your Sleep, an enchanting pair of lullabies written by Christopher Marlowe, one of cabaret's premier musical directors.

Michael Barbieri provides atmospheric lighting, David Brunetti is Reagan's Musical Director, and Scott Barnes, the show's director, gets both thanked and chided by Reagan for encouraging her to do the show while figuratively on the way to the hospital.