Review - Suzanne Carrico's What Christmas Time Means To Me

"We found all the people who didn't see Donny and Marie tonight," Suzanne Carrico chirps with a big smile as she surveys her Metropolitan Room audience. In her new show, featuring material from her CD, What Christmas Time Means To Me, the MAC Award winner might be called a little bit American songbook, a little bit holiday traditional as she celebrates "the only time of the year with a built-in soundtrack" with cleverness, sincerity and a heck of a lot of joy.

She's doing two shows actually. This Met Room run includes several kids matinees, where the drink minimum includes hot cocoa and the ballads are axed in favor of livelier tunes and audience participation. I opted for the grown-up version however, which opens with a beautifully quiet "Little Drummer Boy," sung in complete darkness, which segues into a "Do You Hear What I Hear?" that builds to a soaring and powerful musical oration.

Don Rebic's arrangements (played on the night I attended by Tedd Firth on piano and Jason DiMatteo on bass) take advantage of the flavorful mezzo's classical training and flair for belty jazz vocals. With her long curly blonde locks cascading down to a full-length red dress, her look and sound gleam with casual elegance, as her lovely and confidant vocals are matched with attention to lyrics that make even often-heard standards like "Silver Bells" and "What Child Is This?" pop with interesting story-telling. And you don't need to understand Italian to savor the solemn purity of her "Gesu Bambino."

A surprisingly wry sense of humor is displayed when she shares her discovery that Colonel Harland Sanders, of Kentucky Fried Chicken Fame, actually released three Christmas albums, reading for us the inspirational liner notes with amused fascination.

Joining Carrico on stage for a spell is her director/co-producer and other half, Booth Daniels. Those (like me) who only know him as part of the hilariously off-beat music and comedy duo, Booth and Pat, may be surprised by his attractive, mellow baritone croon as the two playfully pair "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with "Let It Snow." But the Booth we're accustomed to comes out when he asks Firth to play "something sort of ska-techno-Mickey Rourke" for his wild wailing of "Dreidel, Dreidel" (Firth's adaptation of Erran Baron Cohen's arrangement).

Though Carrico may indulge in some Barry Manilow power ballading ("Because It's Christmas") and a bit of jaunty swing (Stanley, Taylor and Brooks' "The Man With The Bag"), her major strength is an ability to gently pull the audience in, as she does with "Some Children See Him," Wilha Hutson and Alfred Bert's description of the ways different cultures view the Baby Jesus - a song she heard her father sing every year at church - and Rebic's hopeful ballad of year-long good will, "Merry Christmas To Us All." It's during such moments that Suzanne Carrico's What Christmas Time Means To Me, warmly reveals what Christmas time means to her.