Martin Vidnovic at The Metropolitan Room: Not So Lonely

"I'm really touched that all of you are here for my cabaret debut… for the fourth time."

It's an old line, but coming from the warm and gregarious Martin Vidnovic it provokes hearty chuckles.  Perhaps best know as the guy who brought sexy to Jud Fry in the 1979 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, Vidnovic's rich and robust baritone, reminiscent of the glory days of John Raitt and Howard Keel, has thrilled Broadway audiences in The King And I (his mom called Yul Brynner "The Bald Ego"). Brigadoon and Baby.  These days he sings lighter tones as the girl's father in The Fantasticks, but for the past month of Mondays Vidnovic, accompanied by music director Jim Fallowell at piano, has been carousing in a honey of an evening at The Metropolitan Room.  I only regret I wasn't able to catch it until the closing performance, denying myself the pleasure of urging all you dear readers to get your fannies out there.

Inspired by his boyhood idol, Sergio Franchi, Vidnovic doesn't hold anything back for the intimacy of the cabaret stage.  Classic songs like "Some Enchanted Evening," "Almost Like Being In Love," and a combination of "We Kiss In A Shadow" and "This Nearly Was Mine" that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end are sung with the vivid vitality of a Broadway performance without ever seeming too big for the room.

Even "Soon It's Gonna Rain," the tender Tom Jones/Harvey Schmidt ballad from The Fantasticks (which he precedes with El Gallo's "You wonder how these things begin…" speech) builds to the same full and passionate climax which he gives to the Neapolitan song, "Ungrateful Heart."  If softness isn't exactly in his repertoire, that doesn't stop him from radiating sincere emotion, as in an introspective "Laura's Theme," dedicated to daughter Laura Benanti.

And he has his wacky side, too.  After demonstrating how he and little Laura would imitate Groucho and Chico doing the famous "swordfish" routine from Horse Feathers, he launches into "Lydia, The Tattooed Lady," quoting more famous Marxist bits between choruses sung while dancing a corkscrew waltz.  There's more than a bit of Gabby Hayes in his hilarious balladeering of "Dying Cowboy" and his between songs patter is loaded with gags that land just above the borscht belt.  ("I drink eight glasses of water a day… as chasers.")

He makes a chilling psychological drama out of his Oklahoma! solo "Lonely Room," contrasting the Rodgers and Hammerstein soliloquy of yearning for an unattainable woman with a comically overdone "Delilah," the Tom Jones hit by Les Reed and Barry Mason that treads the same territory.

Be sure you're there when Martin Vidnovic makes his fifth cabaret debut.

Photos by Maryann Lopinto

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