Cabaret Reviews : Performance Cabaret by Karen Black at Cinegrill

It sounded like an interesting booking: the quirky, but ever-fascinating actress Karen Black doing a cabaret turn at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s Cinegrill.

The stage setting raised even more interesting expectations. Gone was the room’s shiny black Steinway and Art Deco simplicity, replaced by a small bed, a clothing rack, improvised paper windows, and chairs and music racks for a six-piece ensemble.

So far, so good, and the news that the gifted Toni Basil had staged Black’s performance added a further plus.

Two questions remain. The first--what was the point of the peculiar setting?--was answered almost immediately at Friday’s late show when Black arrived on stage in a long nightgown, and explained that most of the songs she planned to do sounded to her as though they should be performed by a woman in bed.

Crawling under the covers, she launched into a set of pieces whose only common link was their strong associations with other performers. The decision to sing them in bed remained, at best, enigmatic.

All of which led, inevitably, to the final question: Was Black’s singing on a par with, say, her acting?

The simple answer? No. Despite a self-described abundance of vocal training, Black too often found the correct pitches elusive and the proper rhythms beyond reach. Her interpretive range generally was limited to hyper-tense imitations of the songs’ original versions.

Black is an undeniably winsome personality, but charm and eccentricity alone cannot carry a cabaret act, and her decision to go public with woefully inadequate readings of songs like “Our House,� “Me and Bobby McGee,� “Eleanor Rigby,� “Send In the Clowns� and “Like A Rolling Stone� should have been given more preperformance critical consideration.

While one can understand the Cinegrill’s desire to bring in performers with name value, the management would do well to take a harder look at musical, as well as marquee credentials. In the last few months the room has shown genuine signs of becoming the city’s flagship cabaret venue. Now is not the time to follow in the overconfident wake of the Titanic.