Review: Marissa Mulder Feels Everything During GIRL TALK at Chelsea Table + Stage

During her October 28th show at Chelsea Table + Stage, Marissa Mulder apologized to her audience for singing so many sad songs.  “Happy songs make me sad,” she said, “Sad songs make me happy.”  This is, of course, perfectly reasonable.  It is perfectly reasonable because happy songs are not interesting.  There is nothing interesting about “Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy” or “Forget your troubles, come on, get happy.”  They are fun to sing, they are bright and tuneful and full of joy, and isn’t that marvelous?  But Marissa Mulder is a storyteller.  She doesn’t want bright and tuneful and full of joy - she wants to tell stories.  Unhappy songs are nothing but storytelling opportunities, and that is why Marissa Mulder is made happy by sad songs.  What is more interesting than telling the story of the worst day in someone’s life?  Even on a comedy number like Christine Lavin’s “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind” (a definite evening highlight), the story is about someone’s worst day, which is always the case in good comedy.  Sadness, unhappiness, anger, vitriol, depression, stress… even the emotional connection to an old garment (another highlight) - now, THAT is storytelling.  And THAT is what makes a storyteller like Marissa Mulder happy.  And when Marissa Mulder is happy, so is her audience.

GIRL TALK is the name of Ms. Mulder’s new musical cabaret, but the talk wasn’t restricted to the compositions by women songwriters that were the focus of the evening.  One of the pleasures of attending a Marissa Mulder show is that she, herself, talks.  It is a pleasure to listen to the affable young orator as she expounds on any subject she, so, chooses… but on this night, Marissa Mulder brought all the facts, she brought all the tidbits, she brought all the trivia, and it worked.  And it worked for her.  As, one by one, the lady with the ginger locks introduced her musical offerings by the likes of Joan Baez, Ani DiFranco, and Amy Winehouse, she included stories from the creation of the compositions, real stories, good stories, and stories that enriched the enjoyment of the music itself.   There were tales told of Stevie Nicks and the affront committed against her when the RUMOURS album came out.  There were stories shared about Pink and how she and her daughter respond, respectively, to bullying.  There was a heartbreaking recounting about Joni Mitchell and the blink of an eye that made all the difference in her life, a mere three years after giving up her child for adoption.  And after nearly every story came a new story, a story in song, the companion piece to the history that showed how women, how these women, were able to rise above real life in order to make something tangible in the form of art that would live forever.  There is no reason, no reason at all, why Marissa Mulder should ever sing a happy song, when the sad ones are serving her so very well.  She is definitely in her element.

For all the sadness in the lyrics and melodies that she is presenting, Marissa Mulder gives every appearance of being a happy person. She is almost always smiling.  Even in the most devastating of moments, Marissa Mulder has a benevolence about her.  The lyrical pocket she is in may be the most painful one of the night (or of the moment). and yet Ms Mulder is open and inviting, she is happy and she is reaching out.  That is because she is doing that which she was born to do.  Also, she is in a constant state of connection.  It is rare to see an artist on the cabaret stage make this much eye contact with their audience.  From person to person, from face to face, from eyes to eyes she goes, singing full sentences and stanzas to one person before moving on to the next.  There is no horizon line for Marissa Mulder - WE are her horizon line, WE are her focus, WE are her audience, and she wants to connect with us, she wants to tell us her story and she wants to have her eyes on us when we react, so that she can see and note that reaction.   It is a most effective performance style, one that this writer wishes, almost desperately, that more club singers would employ.  Would that Ms. Mulder would teach a little course in connecting with one’s audience.

As far as the quality of the music goes, well, there is no critique.  Marissa Mulder has one of those voices, one of those voices that you love.  It is enormously distinctive, with a sound all its own, a sound that resonates with the entire Marissa Mulder package.  Some people just open their mouths and they sing and they sound pretty and that’s that.  Marissa Mulder does all those things, but the voice is an entity in and of itself.  You would always recognize this voice, not just by the tone and texture but by the emotional overload.  There is actually a tear in the voice, there are grins and giggles and sobs and sighs in this voice.  It is a voice to make you happy, even in its saddest moments.  And it comes with acting skills, with storytelling prowess, and with much, much humanity.  In this program of Lana Del Ray and Taylor Swift, of Carole King and Brandi Carlile, there are feelings galore, indeed, there are all the feelings, and Marissa Mulder manages to experience them all without exhausting either herself or the audience.  She feels everything but she feels it her way and the most prominent example is her performance of “She Used To Be Mine.”  This song that has become one of the power ballads of Broadway and the pop radio is a song that women, men, and our gender non-conforming artists sing because of the opportunity to sing big, to sing impressively, and to sing to the sky.  That isn’t Marissa Mulder’s Jenna.  This woman is fragile, this woman is broken, this woman is scared, and this performance reflects all of that without distracting from the author’s original intent.  The anguish and worry are there, but they are as small and as fragile as Laura Wingfield’s unicorn.  There is no need for screlting here, that is already present in the emotion and in the lyric, it isn’t needed in the voice, and, so, Marissa Mulder gets to rewrite this story her way, to match her vision, to meet her aesthetic, and the result is one of the most contained and powerful and individual performances of the Sara Bareilles classic this writer has ever seen.

Girl Talk is a good cabaret show.  It is also a good concert.  It blends the two varieties of small venue performance into one well-executed amalgam, and with Musical Director Maestro Jon Weber at the piano and the marvelous John Miller at the bass, Marissa is in good, protective, and proficient hands, as she rises up, a sunflower in the burning ashes of sadness from the songs that she sings.  Sad, yes.  Unhappy, no.  There is no unhappiness at a Marissa Mulder show - only the joy of watching a unique and uniquely gifted artist ply their craft in all the greatness it deserves.  

Find great shows to see on the Chelsea Table + Stage website HERE.

Marissa Mulder has a website HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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