Review: MEGAN HILTY Makes Magic at Café Carlyle

Megan Hilty’s brilliant career follows the arc of many of the incredible women she has had the privilege to portray. It’s unique and awe-inspiring. To put it quickly, she’s gone from Marilyn Monroe to Patsy Cline to Dolly Parton and to a role both Monroe and Carol Channing once played. From tv to stage to film to stage. In reality, things were not exactly in that order, and, yet, between just four songs, she’d have you believing you were watching any one of those four leading ladies. For this self-described, tried-and-true Northeastern girl from Seattle, one thing remains beyond clear about Hilty: she has a knack for this. It’s almost a gimmick how incredibly she drops into character from song to song. Sure, there are many talented singers who can copy a voice, but it’s as if Hilty's entire being changes, with the way she gestures, inviting the audience to keep their eyes peeled and ears open for who she’ll become next. In between these many moments recalling her star turns, however, we were brought a little closer to the most important aspects of Hilty. As is characteristic of the close quarters and intimate lighting of the fabulous Café Carlyle, Hilty revealed more of herself and who she was underneath the parts she has played, with joy, than anything else.

Of the role that she is best known for, it is hard to say. As she spun the web, sharing the tale of her interconnected career, from one show to the next, it appeared that each audience member had taken a unique journey to the magnetic starlet’s performance. Megan began with the story of the hit show, Smash, which was a brilliant TV program about the behind-the-scenes journey of winning the part of Marilyn Monroe for a Broadway musical. Her wonderful voice easily rose and fell with the lyrics she sang in the show, “I started as a rover, and then victory was mine, I thought the race was over, but they just keep moving the line,” like driving smooth-paved roads over sun-kissed hills rolling into the distance. It’s easy to see, with the crispness and clarity of her voice, why she’d make an easy choice for joining a cast that involves singing. However, the musical cabaret wasn’t just about Megan Hilty. The Tony Award nominee took ample amount of time to praise her band-mates: grammy-nominated pianist, Matt Cusson, bassist Dennis Michael Keefe, drummer Jack Dubeau, and, of course, guitarist and husband Brian Gallagher. A lot of the show, between the glam of her roles, was about the love that those two had shared, and the family they had successfully built together while journeying between productions. Their beautiful duet of “You and Me on the Rock,” singing of houses on frozen ponds and diagonal lines on rolled-out lawns, closed the first third of the show with a sense of peace and serenity.

Hilty also pointed out that she was often cast as talented southern women, specifically Cline and Parton. Jumping at the chance to play Cline, she brought one of my favorite performances of the evening into the show with terrific depth and moving volume, with her performance of “Crazy,” written by Willie Nelson but made famous by Cline. The lines “crazy for feeling so blue” and “crazy for thinking my love could hold you” were especially wistful and captured the audience's hearts, while the pianist and guitarist traded pretty solos, like we had found our way into a jazz club. Megan followed this with stories of how starstruck she was to work with Dolly Parton on the musical, 9 to 5, sharing how she first heard the singer’s personal anthem, “Backwoods Barbie,” with just the two of them in a dressing room. Hilty, too, though from a different background, could use the line, “Don’t judge me by my cover, because I’m a real good book,” as much of the show focused on the depth of her life, as much as the depth of her voice. For example, she spent countless minutes, as the audience was held breathless, listening to the tragedy that had befallen her family this year, and how singing at the Memorial Day concert, she found new wonder in the song, “I’ll be Seeing You.” It may have been the single most impressive song of the evening, and it was the one that was most distinctly personal, as the lines, “I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places that this heart of mine embraces” took on new meaning.

There were a smattering of other songs that told the tale of Hilty, as much as her life in show biz. Songs like “What a Guy,” “Walking after Midnight,” and “That’s Life” demonstrated that there was more to her than just the woman many of us had seen on screen. Cossan’s performance, sharing the duet with her, showed why he was grammy-nominated, as the two reprised an arrangement completed for that show, Smash, bringing us back to where we had started: Monroe. Hilty left us with a song from another show that touched Marilyn’s life, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, which she performed at City Center’s Encores! series, ultimately connecting the dots back to Monroe and Hilty’s various journeys from stage to screen, all the while sharing the strength of her character that made her an easy choice to represent so many wonderful women.

Megan Hilty will conclude her run at The Carlyle on June 24th.  For information on the remaining performances visit the Carlyle website HERE.

Follow Megan Hilty on Instagram HERE.

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