Paul Capsis dares reveal his naked voice

PAUL CAPSIS: DRY MY TEARS
The Neilson, July 21
★★★★

Consider the terror of an imaginary singer who’s always sung a tad drunk, and suddenly has to do it sober. Similarly, Paul Capsis has always performed concerts with a microphone, often with a band, and usually with flashing lights. Now here he was with no microphone, a grand piano (played by Francis Greep), and low-key lighting. It must have been comparably scary.

Paul Capsis eshews the usual amplification.Credit:Warren Lee

Capsis and Greep devised the all-acoustic Dry My Tears to kick off The Song Company’s Close-Up series in its shiny new venue, The Nielson, at Pier 2/3, which is somewhat reminiscent of the Opera House’s Studio, but with tighter acoustics. Here Capsis undressed his voice, while leaving his showmanship fully attired in a burgundy velvet suit and black top-hat. Initially, this acoustic iteration of that tearaway voice seemed slightly thin, like watered wine, partly because the show was kept on a tight rein conceptually, and partly because Capsis was saving his instrument for weightier songs to come.

He began with Willkommen from Cabaret, reprising his leering wickedness as the Emcee, the character lurking in some fabled land between Weimar Germany and Dickens, which remained the case for a deliciously malignant Mack the Knife. In the Bolcom/Weinstein song George, he delayed the “k” to the word “drink”, like adding a sharply cut slice of lime, and his Falling in Love Again retained the ineffable sadness of Marlene Dietrich, but now it was pure Capsis, with no mimicry, as it was on Little Girl Blue.

Not all songs worked. Stephen Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer took him well beyond his comfort zone, as did Billy Joel’s And So it Goes, although the latter’s implicit soul-baring was more interesting. By contrast,he made Elton John’s Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word and Weill’s Je ne t’aime pas convincingly part of the same repertoire, confirming his capacity to cast the old spells in this guise.

Capsis the comedian delighted taking One for My Baby into a wee small hours world of his own, and even stronger was Melody Gardot’s Worrisome Heart, his voice now carrying echoes of his past gospel performances, while also being sassy, funny, sly and winking. Here was the power to which we’ve been accustomed, but without the all those busy electrons.

Dry My Tears: The Neilson, until July 23; Waterloo Studios, July 30-31.

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