Cabaret Review by Andrew Poretz . . . .

Marissa Mulder has been making her mark on the cabaret scene for more than a decade. The Syracuse native is known for her girlish voice that evokes Blossom Dearie, though Mulder is not a jazz singer. Her shows are often unique in her themes and choices of material, such as the music of John Prine, or performing the entirety of Sinatra’s A Man Alone album of Rod McKuen songs and poems. Her willingness to take risks—which nearly always have paid off, at least in the shows I’ve seen—is one of Mulder’s most endearing attributes as a cabaret star.

At Don’t Tell Mama last week, Mulder unveiled her latest concoction, Girl Talk. Here, she brought together an eclectic collection of powerful pieces by female singer/songwriters. The choices as much honored these composers as they were her “medicine” after a recent heartbreak, as well as a means of processing her four-year journey through sobriety. “These women are me,” Mulder confessed. The majority of the material was new to this writer, though the songwriters’ names were not. (Thankfully, the old Jack Jones hit “Girl Talk” was not on the set list.)

Mulder arrived at the Brick Room stage dressed in a long, emerald dress and sporting a gold chain with a pendant, with her curly, ginger hair pulled back to fully reveal her expressive face. Now a marathon runner, she is also quite fit.

Backed by musical director/pianist Jon Weber and bassist John Miller, she opened with “You Learn” (Alanis Morissette/Glen Ballard), a title that helped set the direction of the evening. She sang this with phrasing reminiscent of Morissette’s. It was apparent, too, that Mulder’s singing seemed stronger than ever. She sings from a deeply personal place and keeps a reserve of vocal power for just the right moments.

Mulder, who has her patter and setups down perfectly, performed a pair of Taylor Swift songs. In Swift’s “Mirrorball” (Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff), Mulder did a great job communicating the powerful lyric as if she’d written it. She has a great presence and a wonderfully expressive face. The marvelous backstory of Swift’s Gilded Age Rhode Island mansion, owned by an heiress so rich she cleaned her pool with Dom Perignon Champagne. As Mulder sang, in Swift’s words, the heiress “had a marvelous time ruining everything.”

Sara Bareilles’ “She Used to Be Mine” (from Waitress) is one of those “four-chord songs” that make up much of pop music today and not the only one in the set. Mulder’s emotional connection to Bareilles’s deeply personal writing made the song one of the set’s highlights.

Mulder again used her considerable acting ability on Ani DiFranco’s “School Night,” a modern, song with rap-like rhymes. The tune gave a nod to a standard when it borrowed the line “You’ll never know dear, how much I loved you” from “You Are My Sunshine.”

The star can also be funny. Before performing Pink’s “Perfect” (Pink, Max Martin, and Shellback), she spoke of spending a small fortune to see the artist Pink, and quipped, “Thank God I’m making it back in cabaret!” She saved her best comedy chops for Christine Lavin’s uproarious “Good Thing He Can’t Read My Mind,” another show highlight.

Mulder delivered powerfully on Amy Winehouse’s “Love is a Losing Game,” the stunning, sad song of love failures, but not before revealing her own romantic setbacks. She finished strong with what might be described as a powerful “statement song,” “The Joke” (Brandi Carlisle, Dave Cobb, and Phil and Tim Hanseroth). She immediately encored with “The Shirt” (Mary Chapin Carpenter, a whimsical saga of a shirt that holds ties to the writer’s (and, by extension, Mulder’s) most sacred memories.

Though Mulder worried that this was “a long show” (with 17 songs and set-ups), “Girl Talk” never felt like a guest who stayed too long. The strong combination of Mulder’s appeal, excellent storytelling and acting, along with Weber’s arrangements, made sure of that.

Marissa Mulder’s Girl Talk took place on January 25 at Don’t Tell Mama, 343 West 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues (www.donttellmamanyc.com).

Photos courtesy of Conor Weiss