Reviews

ROY SANDER REVIEW

"A rare blend: A beautiful classically trained voice and classic supper-club elegance, meshed with perceptive interpretations, a flare for the dramatic, and the ability to be equally persuasive whether singing with exquisite delicacy or getting down and wailing."

Roy Sander, critic for BistroAwards.com

by Stephen Hanks
Cabaret Scenes
April 9, 2011
www.cabaretscenes.org

"Taking on the Streisand songbook not only requires talent, it takes humor, emotion and, most of all, chutzpah, all of which Laurain displayed in spades during her one-performance-only show. It’s hard not to relate to and pull for an entertainer paying passionate tribute to her musical muse, especially when that hero is one of the greatest singers to ever grace a stage or screen. But talk about a tightrope walk! Too much stylistic interpretation and you run the risk of turning off an audience intimately familiar with the material and the sound. Too much homage and you fall into a morass of mimicry.

But Jillian Laurain brings too many years of experience in opera and cabaret singing to step on those tribute show landmines. Throughout her 19-song set (plus the opening medley, which began perfectly with “Look at That Face” from Roar of the Greasepaint… and ended with “I’m the Greatest Star” from Funny Girl), Laurain was touchingly reverential but always stayed true to her own powerful and technically proficient voice (with the exception of the obligatory Streisand-esque “Hello, Gorgeous” greeting at the end of the medley). Looking lovely in black from neck to toe, including a classily feminine tuxedo jacket, Laurain launched into a musical Babs biography, delivering those dreamy ballads from Streisand’s early albums and television specials.

…If the midpoint of the set had a theme, it wasn’t about the choice of songs or a particular period of Streisand’s career. It was more about Jillian expressing her deeply personal adult life journey through emotionally charged songs such as “He Touched Me” (Milton Schafer/Ira Levin) from the My Name Is Barbra, Two album, a lovely “unplugged” version of “Why Did I Choose You?"

...The final third of the set fittingly focused on Streisand’s greatest movie hits and the order of the songs was almost operatic in structure. The sequence began with Laurain’s evocative “Evergreen” (from A Star Is Born) and transitioned into a wistful “The Way We Were” before reaching a crescendo with the classic Funny Girlsongs: “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “People,” and “My Man.” There was only one more place for this daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants to go, and when she soared on “A Piece of Sky,” from Yentl, it wasn’t just Jillian Laurain that was flying, but her entire audience."

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