Review - Sharon McNight in Ladies, Compose Yourselves!!, The Sequel

"If they don't know who the hell I am by now," the evening's star deadpans to the Metropolitan Room staff member who asks if she has any press releases to distribute, "they can just cut open my neck and count the rings."

It ain't exactly an evening with Karen Akers when Sharon McNight is in town.

And while the redwoods do have quite a few centuries on her, McNight has been one of cabaret's wackier favorites at least since the days when The Duplex was actually at The Duplex. Her deliciously unique singing voice -- sporting a husky, but fluttery timbre that might be what Bernadette Peters would sound like after thirty years of bourbon shots (It's a compliment. Trust me.) -- matched with a bawdy wit and a knack for smacking a lyric on its backside makes this left-coaster's not-frequent-enough Gotham appearances smashing events.

With Ian Herman at piano, her current gig is a sequel to her very successful, Ladies, Compose Yourselves!!, featuring selections from living female songwriters. Or as she puts it, "Some ladies, some women, some broads I've gotten drunk with a couple of times."

As expected, comic moments dominate the evening; from Mary Liz McNamara's cute and amusing, "Haiku," (about a lazy writer who wouldn't dream of trying to tackle a screenplay or novel) to Dillie Keane, Adle Anderson & Marilyn Cutts' uproarious, "Lieder," (a Weimar cabaret spoof that advises tone-deaf vocalists to gain worldwide adoration by pretending to be German) to April Winchell's affectionate exploration of a certain body part that might remind one of a Georgia O'Keefe.

But McNight can deliver more than just the laughs. Annie Lennox's "Cold," where a woman struggles to keep a relationship alive, is interpreted with a deep molasses sensuality that builds to passionate desperation. She's lovingly soft and vulnerable for Janis Ian's "Jessie" and good, rowdy fun for Ronee Blakley's Nashville hit, "Tapedeck in His Tractor."

The laughs continue with Beckie Menzie and Cheri Coons' "Vibrato," where McNight laments her voice's inability to escape from singing in straight tones, and Marilyn J. Harris's comic bossa nova, "My Dissipation," a blasé remembrance from a woman who squandered her children's inheritance away on drugs and is now suggesting they sell their bodies to support her. In between, Ms. McNight has plenty to say on such subjects as the inability of America's Got Talent to justify its title, and behind-the-scenes observances from her guest appearance on Hannah Montana.

"I was surrounded by 15-year-old millionaires. That was exciting."

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