An enchanting evening with Andrea Marcovicci
Friday, June 16, 2006
By Mary Lou Atkinson
Staff writer
Andrea Marcovicci is a singer, an actress and a storyteller. In her current cabaret show at Le Chat Noir, "I'll Be Seeing You . . . Love Songs of WWII," she also proves herself to be an enchantress.
From her opening number, "As Time Goes By," she had the audience in her thrall Wednesday night, securing them as permanent fans by the time she finished "Heart and Soul," and keeping them under her spell through the closing "You Make Me Feel So Young." Even when appearing lost in song, she never lost her connection with the full-house crowd on the first of five performances.
Calling herself "the chatty chanteuse," she announced early on that this would not be an evening of song alone. She then proceeded to use her acting abilities to turn every song into a little story unto itself, wrapped in a story of her own composition that set it into context. This opened the door to trivia ("As Time Goes By" was written by Herman Hupfield, whose only other hit was "When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on His Tuba"), brief Bogart and Dietrich impersonations and a few catty remarks ("Mary Martin, like Doris Day, became a virgin late in life").
Establishing the backdrop for all the evening's "unapologetically sentimental" songs, she capsulized World War II for an audience that included those who lived through it as well as those who only studied it in school. It was "the good war," she said, "the last time in our nation's history that we all agreed."
After a tender "I'll Be Seeing You," she explained that the song was written in 1938, when "no one wanted it because it was too sentimental." The war changed all that, she said, and it soared to the top of the charts in 1943 when Hildegarde made it into a consummate "goodbye song."
In the most personal segment of the show, Marcovicci held up her mother's "victory lipstick," a family souvenir of the era, and told the charming story of her parents' meeting and marriage.
It was a decidedly sentimental journey (and that song was one of the 26 in the show) but the trip was punctuated by lighter, lively interludes, provided by such saucy songs as "You Can't Say No to a Soldier" and "I'm Doin' It for Defense." Marcovicci continued working her magic by paying tribute to New Orleans' own "war with nature" and asking, before singing "The White Cliffs of Dover," that everyone "say a prayer for all the soldiers in Iraq and your rebuilding." Having appeared in 2004 at Le Chat, Marcovicci was booked to present another show there, "Andrea Sings Astaire," last September. When her visit was postponed until now by Hurricane Katrina, the show was changed to suit the circumstances. It was a perfect match, a timely concoction of nostalgia and optimism.
