Concert & Published Reviews

David Shenton - What's On Stage

London's online cabaret guide - June 30, 2004

Parallel universe: In the best kind of festivals, time seems to be suspended - and not just because, crossing the dateline here, it literally is - and you feel you're in a parallel universe.
I felt that sense of suspended animation while crowding into a large room at 11 in the morning to hear Janet Seidel, celebrate the career of the legendary American cabaret singer Blossom Dearie.

Now nearly 80, Dearie's still singing, as sweetly and lightly as a sparrow, twice weekly in a tiny New York room on W46th Street, and I'm sure she would be simply astonished to find a much larger and more appreciative audience for a celebration of her work over here than she ever gets in person back home.

Seidel actually heard Blossom sing for the first time in Adelaide in the 1970's, remembering that she brought her handbag on stage with her and looked like "a cute librarian".

This delicate, beautiful tribute show perfectly captures her essence, and though Dearie may be irreplaceable, it proves she's at least not inimitable.