THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By Will Friedwald
Dec. 26, 2013
Barb Jungr
'Dancing in the Dark'
Easily
one of our major contemporary vocal artists, the Rochdale-born Barb Jungr is as
much provocateur as she is a singer, as evidenced the way she builds her latest
show around "Dancing in the Dark" by Bruce Springsteen, rather than
the 1931 standard that most cabaret goers would expect—and darned if she
doesn't succeed in making the Springsteen song sound almost as compelling as
the Schwartz & Dietz classic. In fact, in reinterpreting the music of the
leading singer-songwriters, she typically makes the songs sound more meaningful
than the composers themselves—apparently no one told her that's not the way
it's supposed to work. This current show follows an arch of exceedingly
melancholy seasonal texts, from Joni Mitchell's "River" to "Have
Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," all of which emphasize the bleakness
of the midwinter solstice. She might have been tempted to title it
"Christmas Night of the Soul," but that would be giving too much
away. As always, Ms. Jungr is the alternative to alt-cabaret.