Debbie Does Ballads
At first glance, the song list for Debbie Gravitte’s third solo recording, Defying Gravity (JAY Records), looks like the singer simply decided to work through The Diva’s Songbook, with its overwhelming reliance on big theater ballads. But first impressions can be deceiving. As listeners with even a rudimentary knowledge of Gravitte’s career will realize, many of these 15 cuts are from shows that the Tony Award winner has performed during her two-decades-plus Broadway career. And fans who have an encyclopedic knowledge of Gravitte’s work, and/or those who take time to peruse the singer’s informative notes in the CD booklet, will discover that almost every cut has a personal meaning for her.
I suspect it’s a combination of Gravitte’s familiarity with and passion for the material, combined with her still sensational, clarion voice and the backing of the wonderful National Symphony Orchestra, that makes this disc so satisfying and, sometimes, thrilling. The CD opens with a one-two knockout punch. Gravitte clearly has no illusions about ever playing Elphaba in Wicked, but she gives everything she’s got to the album’s title cut, the green witch’s signature number. (She has sung it in concert at the request of composer Stephen Schwartz.) While Gravitte’s rendition may not outclass Idina Menzel’s in terms of vocal pyrotechnics, it’s deeply felt — and you can understand all of the words!
Up next is the song that made Gravitte a star and earned her that much-deserved Tony: Irving Berlin’s “Mr. Monotony”, a delicious bit of double-entendre that the singer wisely never overplays. The same can be said for her bluesy “Junk Man”, a rather obscure Frank Loesser-Joseph Meyer song that she sang in the revue Perfectly Frank to acclaim. Gravitte also re-creates a few more of her great Broadway moments, such as “I Dreamed a Dream” (from Les Misérables), “When You’re Good to Mama” (from Chicago), and the underappreciated “I Still Believe in Love” (from They’re Playing Our Song), so persuasively that you’ll regret you didn’t experience these performances live — unless, of course, you were lucky enough to have done so.
I was lucky enough to have seen Gravitte do superlative work in two City Center Encores! productions: Carnival, in which she was a fabulous Rosalie (that role isn’t represented on this CD), and The Boys From Syracuse, in which she was hilarious as Luce. While her co-stars in the latter show, Rebecca Luker and Sarah Uriarte Berry, aren’t on hand here to join her in “Sing For Your Supper,” she does the next best thing and covers all three parts herself, cleverly billed under all three of the stage names she’s used at various points in her career: Debbie Shapiro, Debbie Shapiro Gravitte, and Debbie Gravitte. It’s a real treat.
This singer is renowned for her spectacular belt, and she doesn’t shy away from showcasing it in roof-raising renditions of “If He Walked Into My Life” (from Mame), “Some People” (from Gypsy), and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” (from Funny Girl). But, unlike some of her contemporaries,Gravitte always pays close attention to the meaning of the lyrics. And she’s perfectly capable of bringing things down a notch, offering a soft but effective version of “Blues in the Night,” a slightly jazzy “Love is Here to Stay,” a semi-quiet “Memory” from Cats (perhaps the album’s weakest cut), and a truly tender “Only Love” from Zorba. Like so much of Defying Gravity, her performance of this song surpasses the listener’s high expectations.
