Colleen McHugh: Keeping Up Appearances

When I visit a cabaret show it's never a surprise to hear a few tunes by the likes of Cole Porter or the Gershwins. What I'm not exactly used to is hearing an original torch song about my own love life. But aside from being a terrific interpreter of both pop and showtune, Colleen McHugh is an experienced improv performer coming to Gotham directly from Chicago's legendary Second City, so naturally a part of her show was to improvise a song based on an audience suggestion.

"Tell me about some sad moment in your life.", she asked the crowd. "Some moment of finality or when things changed for you."

So I volunteered information about the night a woman who I was seeing for about a month told me she was breaking up with me because she couldn't date anyone who liked Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party. I'm not joking. This actually happened. So after asking a few pointed questions to flesh out the details, McHugh and musical director/accompanist Tex Arnold improvised 32 bars of music and lyrics for "The Mild Party". It was a catchy, but soulful, ballad where she managed to squeeze a rhyme out of "I would never choose ya" and "Michael John LaChiusa."

But McHugh has a good ear for rhyming even with other people's material, not missing one hidden gem in Stephen Sondheim's tricky lyric for "Ah, But Underneath". (i.e.: using the proper enunciation needed to rhyme "If his idea of ecstasy / Is to see what he expects to see")

Keeping Up Appearances is the name of her new show at The Duplex ("My Greenwich Village opening!", she announces with a smile that tells us to make up our own double entendre.), where this charming alto belter with a sly sense of humor sings of an assortment of characters who have a special interest in how others see them.

McHugh uses a comically alluring, Mae West flair for "The Lorelei", a Gershwin number about the seafaring siren who lured sailors with her "most immoral eye." But then she's a "good 'ol girl" with a serious sense of melodrama for Bobbi Gentry's "Fancy", about another type of temptress from the wrong side of the tracks.

Marcy Heisler and Zina Goldrich are well-served twice by McHugh, as she rocks out to the comic "Fifteen Pounds (Away From My Love)" before a chilling "Out of Love", where she suffers the devastation of a fresh break-up.

In Jerry Herman's "Look What Happened to Mabel", McHugh does an impressive job of gradually transforming herself from an awkward little pipsqueak to a still-awkward, but enthusiastically glamorous silent screen star. Another fine acting performance accompanies John Wallowitch's "News Item (Dear Nameless)", an absurdly funny number where an actual "Dear Abby" column is set to music. McHugh plays a woman with a dying mother who seems more concerned with dressing properly for the funeral than with her parent's health, then switches to Abby for the slightly snarky reply.

Cole Porter, Jane Olivor, John Bucchino and Dietz & Schwartz are some of the other songwriters represented in this eclectic and entertaining set. And who knows... with a visit to The Duplex (remaining shows November 10 and 17 at 9:30), this delightfully funny belter may turn your own life into a song.