THEATER REVIEW: Kelli O'Hara at Ravinia Festival
Many of the young women who arrive on Broadway from rural Texas or small-town Oklahoma come with a brassy belt and a sassy comedic charm as the calling cards to get them through those well-guarded Gotham doors. Not Kelli O'Hara, the luminous star of “The Light in the Piazza” and “South Pacific.” O'Hara, who grew up on a small farm in Western Oklahoma and who performed at Ravinia's Martin Theatre Wednesday night, has plenty of folksy, homespun charm. But this classically trained (and classy) singer also has a pure, lyric soprano and an inherent softness and gentleness that is beguiling, if only for its unimpeachable authenticity.
I remember Adam Guettel, the grandson of American composer Richard Rodgers, once trying to explain to me in an interview why he wanted the pivotal (and post-Chicago) casting change in “Piazza” that made O'Hara's career. He didn't articulate much beyond “that voice.” He didn't need to say anything more. When O’Hara's voice hits the upper register, it seems to journey to the most disarming of emotional places, with an ease and profundity that very, very few of her peers can emulate.
As a mid-career, 34-year-old Broadway star, O'Hara is still a bit young to structure a show around her biographical journey. Aside from “Sweet Smell of Success,” a flop, she hasn't had many hard knocks. Indeed, her formidable and much-deserved reputation rests mostly on “Piazza” and the Lincoln Center revival of “South Pacific” (O'Hara had the incredible good fortune, and the talent, to be at the center of both the best new musical of the last decade and the best revival). In terms of narrative oomph, to listen to O'Hara sing through her life is a bit like reading Kristin Chenoweth's autobiography. It feels, shall we say, premature.
But so what. Her unpretentious conversation, modest charm, and warm, crinkly eyes make her exceedingly good company and her singing (accompanied by her pianist and musical director Dan Lipton) is just exquisite. She was clearly delighted that so many in her Ravinia audience knew the title song to “The Light in the Piazza” without further explanation and so appreciated the rich vulnerability and technical quality of its delivery. One only wished for more by Guettel, a composer to whom she is so well suited.
But O'Hara was out to demonstrate her eclectic tastes, running through everything from “The Boy Next Door” from “Meet Me in St. Louis” (sung without condescension) to “That's How I Say Goodbye,” a lovely ballad from Marvin Hamlisch's score to “Sweet Smell” that was cut after the Chicago tryout. Pity. They didn't know what they had in O'Hara. In her 75-minute show — plus an encore — she also threw in a song by her husband, Greg Naughton, paid tribute to her teacher, Florence Birdwell, and told of her joy at giving birth last year to a baby boy.
She was far less corny than Kansas in August as she sang about her “wonderful guy,” but we could all feel the lump in her throat.
- CHRIS JONES