By Roy Sander

Don't Tell Mama July 24 & 27

With an extensive background in theatre and cabaret, Barbara Porteus commands the stage like a pro. Backed by musical director Barry Levitt on piano, Eric Udel on bass, and Mayra Casales on percussion, she sings her way with assurance through an appealingly eclectic program in a voice equally attractive across her entire range, chest voice (Peggy Lee and Dave Barbour's "I Don't Know Enough About You") to head tones ("How High the Moon" by Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis).

Her interpretations of two Joni Mitchell songs, "I Had a King" and "All I Want," have a solid dramatic core, and she delivers a tastefully lowdown rendition of the classic "My Handy Man." With the warm and wonderful "A Whole Lotta Sunlight" (Judd Woldin and Robert Brittan, from the musical Raisin), Porteus justifies her claiming this as her favorite song.

In many of the other numbers, she appears to favor what I would label nightclub singing—a presentational approach in which style and arrangement take precedence over nuance and exploration of the lyric. Sometimes this pays off, as with "Too Close for Comfort" (Jerry Bock, Larry Holofcener, George David Weiss); though filled with musical bits and business, the arrangement and performance are so good that the number works very well, indeed. Other selections are less successful. An ill-conceived snappy treatment of Rodgers & Hammerstein's "The Gentleman Is a Dope" has no starch or dramatic point of view; as a result, it becomes dull. Similarly, though the audience seemed thrilled with "I've Got the World on a String" (Ted Koehler and Harold Arlen), I found the interpretation overly slick and hollow.

There is one other issue. Though I have often admired and enjoyed Casales's work in the past, in a few numbers here I found her conga too assertive, distracting from Porteus's singing. What's more, the conga strikes me as an odd choice to be this show's only percussion—though Casales played the instrument with appropriate delicacy during the encore piece.

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The song list in the press kit had the following three incorrect entries: "Handy Man", "World on a String", and "A Whole Lot of Sunlight"; the correct titles are "My Handy Man", "I've Got the World on a String", and "A Whole Lotta Sunlight". Perhaps the list was meant only as a set list to be used by the tech person running the show; if so, it should not have been included in the press kit. What's more, the list carried no writing credits.

Writing about song lists twelve years ago, I had the following to say:

Song lists are a standard part of cabaret press kits—so routine that you might think that what constitutes a proper song list is common knowledge. Not so. Since the majority of lists I receive are deficient in one respect or another, I thought I ought to document what a song list should contain. (While I can't presume to speak for other critics, I would be surprised if most of them did not agree with me, at least in large measure.)

First of all, a song list is not simply a list of the songs you are doing in your act. (I have been given such lists on several occasions.) As a minimum, it should include the names of the writers—the full names, not just their last names. I recall one list that gave a song's writer as "Smith"-what can anyone do with that? (Robert Lissauer's Encyclopedia of Popular Music in America lists 74 Smiths.) And not just the first initial. I will not state in a review that a song was written by C. Smith (there are seven C. Smiths in Lissauer's book); doing so would make me look ignorant—and that simply will not do. Of course, you can get away with simply "Sondheim" or "Kander and Ebb".

You should list both the composer and the lyricist, and indicate which one wrote the words and which the music. It is unacceptable to credit a song only to Burt Bacharach or Johnny Mercer, even though he may be the more famous half of the creative team of that particular song. (This error is made with dismaying frequency.)

This last precept carries over to spoken intros. When I hear a singer say, "here's a song by Harold Arlen," I wince. (If you are doing a medley of songs with music by Arlen, you can properly say something like, "here are several songs composed by Harold Arlen.") Jazz musicians commonly refer to songs as tunes. While I've never liked this—I think it trivializes the songs—it is somewhat understandable in that jazz focuses on music rather than lyrics; however, I've heard more than one non-jazz singer refer to a song with lyrics by the Bergmans as "a Marilyn and Alan Bergman tune." Now, that's too silly for words.

You should get the title exactly right. The Irving Berlin standard is "How Deep Is the Ocean?", not "How Deep Is the Ocean"; however, Nancy Hamilton and Morgan Lewis's "How High the Moon" does not end with a question mark. Does a song's title begin with "The" or not? And please check all spellings.

These are the minimum requirements for a song list. Other useful information you might provide are the date a song was published and, when applicable, the name of the show or film for which it was written.

All of this means that you may have to do a bit of research. The aforementioned Lissauer book is invaluable. You can also call the public library's telephone reference service, or the Information department of the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center. I have found both extremely helpful.

A final comment. While I would never let an incomplete or sloppy song list affect my review of a show, a thoughtfully compiled song list could influence me to see an unfamiliar performer—it tells me that the performer takes what he or she is doing seriously.