Review - Andrea McArdle at The Metropolitan Room: Tomorrow Belongs To Her

Yes, she sings it. And if you've never heard her sing it as a full-fledged, poised, articulate, sexy and self-effacingly humorous adult then you haven't really heard her sing it yet.

The first time I heard her sing it... well, she probably sounded about the same as the first time you heard her sing it. The last time I heard her sing it was at a benefit concert held shortly after 9/11, where she silently planted herself center stage and, with a calming nobility that settled somewhere between a national anthem and an art song, reassured a still-shaken audience that we will all somehow get through this.

But on stage at The Metropolitan Room, where she's just opened an eight performance stint, there is a cooling hipness she brings to Martin Charnin's open-hearted lyric set to Charles Strouse's lightly back-beated march. With a mature glint that comes from someone who knows the ins and outs of that song better that anyone, she exorcises any hint of corniness and delivers it as a confident woman (in a fabulous dress, by the way) who knows that every new day brings an opportunity to turn any bad situation around. She's grown up and she's made the song grow up with her.

With a stage resume loaded with musicals set in the past, Andrea McArdle has never played a contemporary New York gal on Broadway, but in a cabaret setting she's all Manhattan sass and style. Her clarion belt floats deep, smoky tones through warm and textured vibratos; the kind enthusiastically favored by her music director and piano accompanist, Seth Rudetsky. She laughs at her post-Annie career stumbles (like playing Arnold Horshack's little sister on Welcome Back, Kotter), shows a non-sappy admiration for legendary colleagues like Dorothy Loudon ("She didn't like a lot of kids, but she liked me.") and Carol Channing and very impressively holds her own while bantering with the always very funny Rudetsky. This is, quite simply, a knockout of a show.

With Steve Singer on drums and Jeff Gans on guitar, her set delves a bit into the past - Annie's "N.Y.C." is, of course, her New York tribute of choice, and Jimmy Hanley's "Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart" recalls the thrill of playing young Judy Garland in the TV bio-pic, Rainbow - while keeping an eye on a possible future. It's hard to argue with Rudetsky's insistence that she'd be perfect starring in Mame after hearing her bite into Jerry Herman's "If He Walked Into My Life" with stinging regret. Styne and Sondheim's "Some People," written for the role she's wanted to play since she was eight, explodes with confident power from her full belt. ("Annie was the last big musical without mics. It was such an easier business when there were only thirty of us who could hit the back wall.")

She visits Mr. Sondheim three more times; coloring the lyric of "Everybody Says Don't" with the vocal dexterity of an Olympic gymnast maneuvering around the uneven parallel bars, slowing down "You Can Drive A Person Crazy" into a snazzy flirtation and adjusting the lyric of "Broadway Baby" into a plea for a good role. ("I need a show 'cause I'm a wreck / Maybe Disney's thinking of a female Shrek.")

Speaking of possible roles for Ms. McArdle, after the performance I found myself chatting with Paul Lambert, lead producer of the Broadway bound musical based on The First Wives Club, who wanted to point out that the evening convinced him she could make a terrific Brenda, the role essayed by Bette Midler in the film. She certainly showed a funny side with a novelty number penned by Martin Charnin (my quest to find out who composed the music continues), where she played an audience member who is shocked to see that the little girl she once saw in Annie has now developed more than just her vocal range.

She's also developed into a dynamic and thoroughly entertaining cabaret performer. Andrea McArdle's Metropolitan Room engagement plays through August 25 and whether you have fond memories of a curly-headed orphan or not, I think you're gonna like it here.