McBroom Encore

Back in July tt saw Amanda McBroom's cabaret act "Noir" at Yale. Now she is at the Metropolitan Room in Manhattan with another act called "Strange Days" accompanied by her frequent collaborator Michelle Brourman.

I arrived for the 9.30 pm show to see the indefatigable Julie Wilson waiting patiently in the foyer...she truly is amazing...and when I was shown to my table where I was seated with eight other customers the older gentleman next to me immediately said, "Well, of course I know who you are. I'm Australian." He was a diplomat named Carl who has lived here since 1972. Only in New York. We talked Green Cards.

Most of the songs in the programme were written by Ms. McBroom from her opening number "(We live in) Strange, Strange Days" to her inevitable closer "The Rose" which she said she wrote many years before the movie. Her friend Ms. Brourman said "Hey, you wrote a song called The Rose and they're making a movie called The Rose. Do you want me to send them a cassette?" From such simple ideas, lives change...
McBroom is based in L.A. ("where yoghurt is the only living culture") so some of her songs came directly from items she read in the L.A. Times, such as the plaintive love song "Take Me Back Again" which culminates in the revelation that the singer has discovered that their ex-lover has just won 12 million dollars in the lottery, and the extraordinary "Wheels" inspired by an obituary for Hollywood actress Mary MacLaren...

who apparently died in her 80s on the streets of Hollywood with her belongings in a shopping cart.

McBroom paired Michael Smith's spooky ghost story "Demon Lover"..

"Maybe you have a demon lover
Who might have been your husband or your wife
Watch out for people who belong in your past
Don't let 'em back in your life..."

with "That Old Black Magic" as a tribute to New York's obsession with Halloween (it truly is everywhere, I must hit the streets with the camera on Monday). She appealed to politicians with a penchant for Tweeting photos of their private parts in "Put That Thing Away", and sang a cautionary tale of an older woman's affair with a jealous young lover in "Crimes of the Heart". She paid tribute to her husband of 41 years, the performer George Ball, in "I'm Not Afraid of Anything (but Losing You") and closed with her trademark tour de force "Carousel", the Jacques Brel gem that is currently a cabaret fave with the likes of Rita Gardner and Chita Rivera.

McBroom and Brourman closed with a lovely Portia Nelson/McBroom collaboration called "Just in Case" paired with "Stand By Me". A splendid evening.