Megan Hilty In Concert

When Broadway’s favourite ‘Blonde Bombshell’ Megan Hilty sang the Smash anthem “Let me be your Star” last night there was no doubt she was a star and a star of the first magnitude with a voice that could blast a tune to the back wall of the theatre or caress a ballad with touching sweetness or regret.

It might have been the vast Concert Hall but the ambience was that of New York’s upper east-side intimate boite the Café Carlyle. And most of the program she sang at her recent stint as this famed New York nightspot became the basis of her concert.

Best known in Australia for her turn as Ivy Lynn in NBCs musical drama Smash, her program featured a good selection of songs from that series. She opened with a blistering “They Just Keep Moving the Line”, closed with a coupling of “Don’t Forget Me” and “Let Me Be Your Star”, and in between sang a most moving and effective version of “Second Hand White Baby Grand”, a song she claimed was her favourite from the series.

Her salute to Wicked, a show she played Glinda in for four and a half years on Broadway and on the road, was the reflective “For Good” and a very funny comic reading of “Popular”.

She also proved her comedic skills on “Alto’s Lament” which amusingly captured the plight of the performer who wants to sing soprano but gets stuck with the alto part. Her “Suddenly Seymour” duet with guitarist and husband Brian Gallagher gave a nice contemporary vibe to the concert, with the mix of his rough-edged acoustic guitar vocal with her smooth silky tones, likewise her duet with pianist and musical director Matt Cusson of “That’s Life” with her providing the sass and him delivering the grit.

The four-piece band had funk galore, which was evident on the driving Garland arrangement of “Come Rain or Come Shine”.

She gave us a taste of her Lorelei Lee performance in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes with a Monroe inflected “Bye Bye Baby,” and the complete and brilliant set of lyrics to “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend”, but her most poignant moment was the coupling of “Autumn Leaves” with Johnny Mercer’s posthumously published “When October Goes” with lyrics by Mercer and a melody by Barry Manilow. The sadness of aging has never been more gut-wrenching.

Peter Pinne  

More Reading.

Our Interview with Megan Hilty