BWW Reviews: 2012 MetroStar Talent Champ BILLIE ROE Delivers a Gritty, Winning Tribute to Tom Waits

Cabaret Reviews and Commentary by Stephen Hanks

You probably don't have to feel sorry for a mature, experienced female singer who decides to tackle the gritty music of Tom Waits and calls her show 1978 NYC Underground, but it was still tough not to feel for Billie Roe as she performed this week at the Metropolitan Room. Roe, who in 2011 offered the highly-praised Dangerous Women: Life In Film Noir, admittedly has yearned to present a Waits songbook for 35 years, but just a couple of months before her four-show run which ends tonight at 9:30 pm (her prize for winning the 2012 MetroStar Challenge Competition at the Met Room), rising cabaret star Marissa Mulder staged a Tom Waits-themed show that was close to perfect in every way and earned rave reviews from the New York Times and BroadwayWorld.com. (http://cabaret.broadwayworld.com/article/BWW-Reviews-Marissa-Mulder-Rolls-Up-Her-Rainbow-Sleeves-and-Conquers-Tom-Waits-Classics-20130328).

The question was: Would Roe's Waits effort totally pale by comparison?

To Billie's credit she didn't go underground once she heard about Mulder's show. Since Roe's strong, earthy alto contrasts with Mulder's angelic mezzo soprano, and there was only one song common in both sets ("Downtown Train"), it is easier to keep the comparisons to a minimum and judge Roe's show on its own merits. With an excellent band led by Musical Director/Pianist Tracy Stark (including the superb Peter Calo on guitar, Saadi Zain on bass, David Silliman on percussion, and Roxy Coss on woodwinds), a theme tied to a specific period in Roe's life and the life of New York, and a cleverly structured set list which incorporated Waits compositions written from 1973 to 2004 into a 1978 storyline, Roe and her director Lenny Watts ended up producing a show that if not spectacular, was solid on many levels.

Roe found herself trying to negotiate New York as a young performer during a time when the Bronx was burning and the entire city seemed to be bleeding. The year 1978 was only one removed from the arrest of the serial murderer known as "Son of Sam," and a year before this reviewer would be beaten to a pulp on a nearly empty subway car in the middle of the night with none of the vigilante Guardian Angels in sight. While New York was suffering through a financial crisis, then President Gerald Fold told the city to "drop dead" and Jimmy Carter became President. Gang and gun violence was rampant, Times Square was a seedy, porno and crime wonderland called "The Deuce," and the World Champion New York Yankees were known as "The Bronx Zoo." The city's two iconic cultural venues seemed to be the decadent disco Studio 54 and the hedonistic pleasure palace Plato's Retreat.

So it was fitting that Roe should enter the Metropolitan Room while Stark and the band played dissonant notes and chords that sounded like a graffiti-decorated subway train screeching into a station. But for some reason she and director Watts decided to have Roe careen away from the stage and awkwardly begin her first number, "Downtown Train," from the audience on the far side of the room. And the pedestrian Rod Stewart-like arrangement of the song (which was terrific in Mulder's set) made one wonder if this show was going off the track from the start. Then setting the stage for 1978 New York blight with a combination of "Underground" and the morose, desolate narrative poem "Children's Story" (the first of a few numbers in which Roe overacted a tad), Roe delivered the number as if she was an evil witch terrorizing a child. "In 1978 my life felt like an innocent dream, but also a nightmare," Roe related before offering the carnival-like sound of "Innocent When You Dream"--as opposed to losing your innocence when you're trying to deal with the big, bad city in the late '70s. (Please click on Page 2 below to continue.)

The band overshawdowed Roe's average delivery on "Union Square," and then Roe sang "Altar Boy," as if she were a drunken Irishman at a bar. It was a fun interpretation, but again a bit overdone. It wasn't until the sixth song of the set, "Romeo Is Bleeding"--actually released in the year Roe's story takes place--where the combination of her storytelling skill, passion for Waits' music, and vocal strength became evident. Sounding a bit like a smooth James Cagney (who is actually mentioned in the lyric), Roe offered her best performance to that point, as she was gritty, rhythmic, and powerful. She then transitioned into haunting and emotional on "Soldier's Things," sounded as if she were singing a song from Sondheim's Sweeney Tood on "Dead and Lovely" (connected to Roe's relating the tale of the 1978 murder of Nancy Spungen, allegedly at the hands of the Sex Pistols' punk rocker Sid Vicious), and gave "Make It Rain" a hard-edged, blues rocker feel. But again on "Rain," as well as on 1973's driving blues tune "Virginia Avenue," the acting affectations detracted from the effectiveness of the interpretation and rendered the emotional power a bit less than genuine.

The end of the set was again engaging and compelling, as Roe ended her tale of what seemed like one long, rough 1978 New York night with a lovely and tender rendition of "Time" (1985). And when on her finale, 1973s "Grapefruit Moon, Roe wistfully sang "'Cause every time I hear that melody/Well, something breaks inside," you knew she was also singing about her 35-year-long love affair with the music of her muse. In spite of a few flaws, this was one cabaret tribute show that was worth the wait, for both Billie Roe and her audience.

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