Review: Tanya Moberly's STANDARDS Is a Purist's Dream at Don't Tell Mama

The beauty of the art of cabaret is that there are as many ways to put together a show as there are singers to perform them. Unlike its closest cousin, musical theatre, the rules, if indeed there are rules, are much less rigid and formalized. It is perhaps the most personal of all the arts in that the singer's personality is everything. Most of the best of cabaret is made up of only three elements: a singer, a story, and some variation of The Great American Songbook, that ever-expanding catalog of tunes that have stood the test of time.

Tanya Moberly is a well-versed custodian of that catalog. Her love of the classics came from a childhood immersed in recordings by Streisand and other pop singers who dabbled in the classics of the golden age. She salutes those beginnings in her new show STANDARDS, which opened this week at her artistic home, Don’t Tell Mama. For 26 years she has been creating the art of cabaret there as a performer, director, producer, and as co-host of the long-running SALON series. Along the way, she has picked up an impressive number of MAC and Bistro awards.

The structure of the evening is simplicity itself. After an opening greeting, explaining that we are dealing with songs written from 1923-1962 and how she came to love them in the first place, she launches into nearly two dozen songs, most of them well-crafted miniatures, without another word of dialogue until the end of the evening. Moberly is a fine actress who gives us over 20 interesting characters while simply presenting the songs without a lot of folderol. It is clear that she trusts and adores the material and doesn’t feel the need to dress it up in a lot of context.

What emerges is a show that demonstrates her great emotional range. She goes from the loudest growl to the softest purr in a matter of seconds. She is wryly funny one moment and then turns around and breaks your heart. She embodies her songs without overwhelming their meaning. It is a very tricky high-wire act that seems completely effortless. She is working in the tradition of some of the great musical monologists like Charles Aznavour, Liza Minnelli, Bernadette Peters, and Julie Wilson. The short tunes would make a wonderful web series to instruct how to captivate a room simply through storytelling.

Since the evening was in part inspired by Streisand, Moberly began with one of her signature tunes, “Sam You Made the Pants too Long," a jazzy, bluesy comic song that perfectly fits Moberly’s clarion voice. There were far too many tunes to convey the delight of each one, but there were some definite highlights. A trio of Cole Porter tunes “In the Still of the Night," “ I Concentrate on You,” and “Get Out of Town” painted a romantic portrait. She gave a hard-boiled version of “Makin’ Whoopee” that was worthy of Joan Blondell. Her wistful reading of “What’ll I Do” reminded me why this has long been my favorite standard of all time.

She gave full-throated passion to Jule Styne’s “Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry." “Mr. Sears and Roebuck” was a very funny piece of specialty material about ordering a man from the famous catalog. She gave a transporting performance of Hoagy Carmichael’s “The Nearness of You.” A medley of “How Deep Is the Ocean” and “Cry Me a River” painted a heartbreaking sketch of a relationship gone bad. She had the straightforwardness of Rosemary Clooney in her rendition of Nat King Cole’s “Straighten Up and Fly Right." She gave a completely introspective performance of “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” and "It Never Entered My Mind.” In the latter tune, she entirely captured the brittleness of Lorenz Hart’s lyric. She also breezed through the delightful Comden and Green lyric of “Thank a Lot But No Thanks.” She came back to a Barbra Streisand signature “Any Place I Hang My Hat is Home” for the last section of the concert before she wrapped up with Peggy Lee’s “New York City Blues.”

Tanya Moberly inhabited each one of these songs with intense artistry. And she did it by simply delivering the lyrics honestly. There wasn’t a false second or a moment you could point to as acting. There was real communication between the artist and the audience. That is a very rare thing in this or any age. Ms Moberly was supported by the beautiful arrangements of her musical director,  Ian Herman, and the coolest of sidemen, bass player Ritt Henn. The three musicians worked as one. It is a bold thing to present an evening of completely familiar tunes with no dialogue, simply letting the songs speak for themselves. Tanya Moberly made it look like second nature. The show returns to Don’t Tell Mama on November 14 and 15. Miss it at your own risk.

To learn more about Tanya Moberly and her upcoming projects, go to tanyamoberly.com.

For other great shows at Don’t Tell Mama, visit donttellmamanyc.com.

Tickets to the November 14th and November 15th performances of STANDARDS are available on DTM's website.

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