Ann Hampton Callaway

Ann Hampton Callaway: Gonna Love Her Like Nobody's Loved Her

November 10

There are people who sing songs and there are people who inhabit them. The former come at the work from the outside, manipulating the blend of words and music to present a miniature drama about a person feeling something deeply. The latter come at the work from the inside, stepping right into the music, taking emotional shelter in the arching strains of the melody, moving through the lyrics as through rooms, each one containing keepsakes dear to the singer's heart that must be shown and shared, so that the song, whether it's about being moonstruck or melancholy, feels lived in.

Ann Hampton Callaway is one of the latter people, and hearing her in performance at the Scottish Rite Theatre it was easy to understand why producer Stuart Moulton chose her to inaugurate his new theatrical venture, Austin Cabaret Theatre. She wasn't going to serve up romantic ballads and standards with the sort of reverent appreciation that would make cabaret feel quaint and subdued, Muzak for the out of touch. She was going to burrow inside the Great American Songbook and work it with such impassioned, intoxicating enthusiasm that it would excite audiences and make cabaret intimate, immediate, a real event.

Which is precisely what she did.

Seating herself at a grand piano, Callaway launched into a rendition of "Come Rain or Come Shine," that sparkling Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer gem, that shot sunbeams all over the theatre. With her voice dipping into luscious low tones and sliding teasingly around Mercer's come-hither lyrics, her fingers bouncing brightly and playfully across the keys -- tickling the ivories has rarely seemed so apt -- the number took on a rollicking air in which the singer's zestful affection for her lover -- and for the song itself -- shone through.

Callaway's ardor for the material started there and never waned throughout the two hours she held the stage, whether the singer-songwriter was performing standards (those classic songs that everybody knows) or "Ann-dards" (those new songs she's written that she claims nobody knows). In tribute to Sarah Vaughan (who she does a wicked impression of), Callaway performed "Tenderly" and did it in a way that achingly fulfilled the promise of the title. Her nod to Sinatra, "In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning," poured forth wistful longing like midnight tears. And her soulful take on "Blues in the Night," which she performed in the Broadway musical Swing! to great acclaim, not to mention a Tony nomination, infused that familiar torch song with new urgency.

But all was not sobs over the martini glass. For every ballad that tore hearts in two, Callaway delivered an upbeat number that sparked an irrepressible outbreak of smiles. She revved up the Ella Fitzgerald hit "Mr. Paganini" with some zinging scat singing and served an original number, "I've Got the 'I'm Too White to Sing the Blues' Blues," mocking her plain vanilla background as inadequate for a vocalist working the territory of Billie Holiday and Dinah Washington, that showed the cabaret artist at her most self-deprecating and most witty. And whoever wasn't charmed by Callaway's generous helpings of humor between songs must have been by her improvised song incorporating words and phrases suggested by the audience (and with such suggestions as "Bombay Sapphire," "enchilada," and "Is that you, Stephanie?" this was no small feat).

By the evening's end, the crowd was loath to let Callaway go. Her vivacity, her smoothness, her sheer pleasure in what she does, had enraptured us. She had predicted in that opening song that we were going to love her like nobody loved her, and she was right. Here's betting that everyone fortunate enough to have savored Austin Cabaret Theatre's debut offering is going to keep loving Ann Hampton Callaway come rain or come shine.