By Brian Scott Lipton . . .
If you believe everything you see in the movies, “cabaret” often consists of a cool, soigne-dressed songstress delivering sultry standards to a barely involved audience. In reality, that’s rarely the case—and nothing could have been further from the truth than what happened on Megan Hilty’s triumphant return to the Café Carlyle on June 20.
Okay, there was a small truth in my opening statement, as Hilty looked smashing in a black sequined gown. But otherwise, the hour-long show was the kind of consummation between singer and audience to be wished for devoutly. The show was Hilty’s first appearance at what she rightly calls “her favorite room in her favorite city in the world” in five years, leading to palpable excitement from both the stage and the rest of the room.
Given the circumstances, I doubt anyone had any complaints about Hilty, in fine and expressive voice, devoting some of her show to her long-time favorite tunes, including Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman’s propulsive “They Just Keep Moving the Line” from Smash (along with their reworked version of that show’s “Let’s Be Bad” as now featured in the Broadway musical Some Like It Hot, and a special arrangement of That’s Life); Dolly Parton’s feminist anthem “Backwoods Barbie” from the musical 9 to 5 (along with a spirited sing-along of the show’s title tune), and her extraordinary rendition of “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, in which she triumphed some years ago at Encores!
But it was some of her less-expected material that really scored. Having played Patsy Cline in the 2019 TV movie, Patsy & Loretta—a role, she strangely insists, for which she was wildly miscast—Hilty beautifully delivered two of the country icon’s greatest hits: “Crazy” and “Walking After Midnight.”
Open-hearted and vulnerable (both on and off the stage), Hilty expressed her love for her husband (and guitarist) Brian Gallagher through two superb selections, the little-known Marvin Hamlisch-David Zippel ballad “What A Guy” (originally performed by Bernadette Peters, one of Hilty’s heroes, in the short-lived Broadway musical The Goodbye Girl) and Grammy winner Brandi Carlisle’s delightful “You and Me and the Rock,” which Hilty framed as a tribute to how she and Gallagher (and their two young children) got through “those years when we weren’t allowed to see anybody.”
Still, the show’s most touching moment was when Hilty spoke, albeit a little vaguely, about the horrific plane crash that took the life of her pregnant sister Lauren, her husband, and young son, saying it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge something that had been so public. She followed that with one of the most beautiful renditions of Irving Kahal’s 1938 standard “I’ll Be Seeing You” that I’ve ever heard, thanks in part to her first-rate band, which includes musical director Matt Cusson on piano, Dennis Michael Keefe on bass, and Jack DeBoe on drums.
And while Hilty doesn’t believe in the traditional cabaret encore (no walking off the stage for her), she nonetheless came up with the perfect ending: Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher’s “The Rainbow Connection”—a song that has closed her shows at the Carlyle for almost a decade and remains a nightly lullaby to her children, Viola and Ronan. The lovers, the dreamers, and, yes, me! Those words perfectly described everyone in that room. You can be one too!
Megan Hilty continues at Café Carlyle (35 East 76th Street at Madison Avenue) through June 24. Call 1-800-405-1985 for reservations.
Photos: David Andrako
