WE WANT YOU: A MetroStar Is Born -- Musings on Singing Contest, Part 2 in a series

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 Once again, we invite Kathleen France, singer and blogger, to comment on Metropolitan Room's weekly rounds of the singing competition. It's held each Monday at 7pm. Here is her report from the second night of preliminaries. She is a former competitor herself, and last year, was a MAC nominee for her debut cabaret show.

Well, another preliminary round of the MetroStar competition went off without a hitch this week, with Tom Gamblin as our wonderful emcee, and Nate Buccieri back on the keys, as our music director. I just love to watch Nate Buccieri's phrase-ology! (If you've had the chance to watch Nate play, you know exactly what I mean - there is something special and joyful about it.)

This week, I really enjoyed being part of the audience, and was very entertained. There's always a certain excitement and buzz to a MetroStar audience. Not only are they there to support their friends and hear the talents of others, but they have a very important job: They are there to vote for their favorite performers and narrow down the field of nearly fifty participants to find our next winner. Voting itself is just a tad confusing. Each audience member receives two ballots. They are required to select three performers from the list and mark a 1, 2, or 3 next to their favorite artists, with three points for the top choice. The contestants with the most total points (from audience and the more heavily weighted judges' votes combined) move on. Each ballot must have all three selections on it to be valid, and the audience members must stay for the entire performance to have their votes counted.

Obviously, people who can pad the audience with friends have the opportunity to significantly increase their scores. And, as the contestants progress, hopefully those same supportive friends have large enough bank accounts to continue their weekly commitment of voting for the duration of the eight-week contest. Last year, a female musical theatre student from NYU entered the contest, and I seem to remember her having her ENTIRE CLASS there each week. Those getting the one-point and two-point scores can become major players. For the most part, I believe audience members really do pay close attention and take their actions seriously in picking the people they believe are the most deserving.

So, this week I decided to take an audience poll. I wanted to see who had a large number of supporters in the audience, and also see if these friends had ever experienced a live cabaret performance before and actually had an educated view of what the heck they were voting on. The cabaret community is an intimate one, and if you are a big supporter of cabaret, you tend to meet virtually everyone out and about. The MetroStar competition seems to have quite a few new faces in the audience each week, and I wanted to welcome them into our clan with open arms. In Night # 2 of the competition, the majority of the audience members were cabaret pros. They had been to cabaret shows before and they knew what they were about. We had just a smattering of newbies, but out of those newbies, I had the pleasure of meeting two women vacationing here from Spain, who had picked up Time Out New York, saw Metropolitan Room's show listing and decided to come see what it was all about. They seemed to really enjoy it! Also, I spoke with a couple from Philadelphia, who pop in and out of the city and when they do, they come see cabaret! They do not know a single contestant in the MetroStar competition, but they thought it was fun to vote and see the new talent.

I am here to tell you, and I must say, this past week I had an extremely difficult time making my selections because the performances were so good. They all brought their "A" game, and I was particularly impressed with the men! As any female singer knows, when going  to an audition or performance, there are usually about twenty million women to roughly five men, sort of similar to the ratio of single women to single men on the New York dating scene. This week's guys were very strong. Robert Gino, T. Oliver Reed, Reginald Woods and Gordon Michaels all had excellent voices. Two contestants performed songs this week, where they impersonated different famous musical theatre icons. Molly Marie Walsh did the song, "Who Will Love Me As I Am?" from the musical Sideshow and morphed into Carol Channing, Julie Andrews, Ethel Merman, Celine Dion, and others. She had me rolling on the floor. Megan Candio transformed from Annie to Julie Andrews before my eyes singing the song "Tomorrow," continuously modulating higher and higher until the song's climax, where she just moved the microphone to the side and let those high soprano notes ring. Also getting rid of the mic at the end of his song, was Gordon Michaels, the self-described "Baptist from Boston," who took us to church by singing his rendition of "This Is the Moment" from Jekyll & Hyde. Amy Rivard did a fine job with what I believe to be the most popular song, sung by EVERY soprano on the planet, "The Girl in 14G." This time though, I actually did hear more of the song's lyrics that I had previously missed, which could be due to Amy's clear acting choices, or it could be due to the fact that it is now the third time I have heard it sung in two days of competition. Some of my favorite song selections of the night were "Night Song" from the musical Golden Boy, which had gorgeous lyrics and was sung by Marissa Mulder, and "Irving," a very funny song sung by Ruth Carlin that had the audience laughing. As I said before, it was very difficult for me to pick a favorite, which makes it that much more important that the audience is there to help whittle down the competitors in this close race to the finish. As performers, without you, the audience, we'd all look pretty silly standing up on stage singing to ourselves. So, if you have the chance next Monday, come see some of these great performers, and help us select the next MetroStar.

See www.MetropolitanRoom.com for a list of all singers, and full information on this, and other booked acts. The contest continues each Monday through the end of August at the club's location, 34 West 22 Street. They can be reached at (212)206-0440.

Thanks, Kathleen!  We look forward to your next report—and your own next cabaret show, too!  For more on Kathleen, see her website www.KathleenFrance.com

CATCH-UP ON CABARET is made possible via the generosity of Jamie deRoy and friends