November 22, 2002 MUSIC IN REVIEW; Andrea Marcovicci By STEPHEN HOLDEN
The Oak Room
"After 15 years of performing tributes to one or another great songwriter of the past, the cabaret singer Andrea Marcovicci has finally gotten around to saluting Cole Porter, whose work remains the most high-styled distillation in song of old-time show-business glamour.
''So in Love: The Love Songs of Cole Porter,'' which runs through Jan. 12 at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel, is an anthology of more than two dozen Porter songs (many of them obscure) that Ms. Marcovicci (accompanied on piano by Shelly Markham) interweaves with a loving, if gently barbed, account of Porter's privileged life.
Even by today's sky's-the-limit standards of opulence, the balls that Porter and his wife, Linda, gave in Venice sound extravagant in Ms. Marcovicci's juicy descriptions. At one fantastic shindig, she says, the Porters provided costumes for the 500 guests.
Ms. Marcovicci may be the ultimate example of a cabaret performer who conquers through charm and the ability to weave a spell. That spell has less to do with singing notes than with conjuring and then inhabiting the emotional and social world of a song. Phrasing her material in leaps and starts, almost as if she were channeling the lyrics from the past, she makes you feel as if she were living a lyric right then and there. At Tuesday's opening-night show, the nostalgic ''You Don't Know Paree'' and the naughty ''Always True to You in My Fashion'' rang with special authenticity. "
