She's a Diva

Despite the nasty weather all day yesterday, it turned out to be a fantastic night to be at Ravinia. The rain stopped, the temperature was comfortable, and a Martin theatre event always means easy parking and exiting. Too bad the concert itself didn't quite live up to the pleasant night. It wasn't a bad concert, in fact for the most part it was quite enjoyable, it just wasn't the great concert it could have been. Now, for those of you who haven't been keeping up with my posts, I'm writing about Heather Headley's concert at Ravinia last night. I knew going in that there were no guarantees. While she's more known to the Ravinia crowd for her Broadway work, she's better known to the general public for her god-awful solo albums, and there was a sizeable contingent there last night that was obviously drawn there by their familiarity with the crap part of her output. Trying to balance the two factions would be difficult enough for any artist, but for a younger, less-experienced artist like Heather, it presents even more challenges. She started that night, albeit almost 15 minutes late, her first diva act of the night, by giving the majority of the audience, including myself, what we came for. The first act was Broadway and standards. I had been hoping that she'd surprise us with a performance of "What's New At The Zoo" from Do-Re-Mi, but apparently she didn't think the entire audience was as big hardcore fans as I am of her BWay work, and she did not. However, since I really wasn't expecting her to perform it, it wasn't that much of a disappointment, but as I mentioned above, it is one of the things that kept a good concert from becoming a great concert. She opened with what is hopefully a hint at her next project, "Home" from The Wiz, and while I wasn't fond of her band's orchestration, she nailed it. She came out looking great in an elegant dress and fabulous stillettos and set the bar quite high for herself. It's been confirmed that The Wiz will be returning to Broadway next fall, but casting and creative details are being held quite under wraps. It would be the perfect vehicle for Heather to make her return, and if this wasn't a veiled hint of her upcoming plans, let's hope it was her audition and the producers were in the audience. She almost capped it right there by saying "Thank you -- and good night!" and pretending to walk off stage, only to turn around and return to the mike, it was a great way to poke fun at her diva image. However, she then followed it up with about 10 minutes of inane and repetitive stage banter. We got it the first time, you're honored to be here and it's going to be a fun night. You don't need to repeat the words "honored" and "fun" fifty times, you're not Anne Rice. She then made another diva joke about continuing to play the role of a Nubian princess long after she left Aida and went into "Elaborate Lives," my favorite song from Aida, but held back a little too much on the bridge and left the audience underwhelmed. She made up for it with some nice standards, and then closed the act with a series of Broadway songs including "Can't Help Lovin Dat Man" and a gorgeous rendition of "Bring Him Home," dedicated to the soldiers in Iraq, which we found out through another excessively long and embarassingly awkward stage monologue. She's got the singing down, but she needs to work on the stage banter. We didn't hear Babs or Diana fumbling around and repeating the same phrase over and over again. If you want to join the greats, you've got to pay attention to your entire act, not just the music. Stage banter aside, my only real complaint about the first half of the show is that at times it felt like she was trying way to hard to prove that she is a Serious Singer. You could just hear the effort she was putting into lines like "God --- on --- hiiiiighhhhh," just really stretching it out. She let us know that she was working, while a true great would just work and make it look effortless. Again, good concert, not great. We then had intermission, which also went on longer than announced (the 10 minutes became almost 20), and then she came back for the ghetto part of the show. Obviously, if she had it her way, she'd devote her career to turning out more of her crap R&B music and ditch Broadway altogether. The band kicked off a Stevie Wonder song (I don't know what the title was, but the chorus was "I love you, I love you, I love you"), and she came out in some outfit that looked like it came out of the clearance bin at Nordstrom Rack. She had some sort of lumpy black sleeveless shirt-type thing and black capri pants, and a cheap looking gold chain that looked like it came from the jewelry counter at JC Penny. Now apparently she's married to some football player, so that may have some influence on her personal musical and style preferences, but it was obvious that she was much more comfortable and at ease singing Stevie Wonder with a WNUA-style-sounding orchestration, and ironically, it improved her vocal performance. It wasn't so painfully earnest and she was obviously having fun, which at least made the song palatable. She seemed much more at ease, the banter was more restrained, although still a little too rambling in some places, and she obviously was having more fun. She did a couple R & B songs, a great rendition of Elton John's "Your Song," and then blew the roof off the Martin with "I'm Not Your Superwoman," or at least I think that's the title, she said it was a song from about 15 years ago but didn't give us the name of it, and that was the chorus. Again, the orchestrations were awful WNUA style light R & B, but her voice saved the songs. However, she then ended the show with one song each from each of her CD's. She did "I Wish I Wasn't" from the first CD, which is probably the most tolerable, although still horribly dull, and then the title song, "In My Mind," from her newer CD, which was the lowest point of the show, and unfortunately the end. She didn't do an encore, it was the awful song and then she walked off and the lights came up. I had really been hoping she'd pull out "What's New at the Zoo" for her encore, but it was just not to be. However, while her musical choices left some to be desired, her stage presence was phenomenal. She had all the diva moves down pat, and would give Diana Ross a run for her money. Someone just needs to sit down with her and tell her that the R & B crap is not the way to go. It's too bad that she obviously enjoys performing it more than the music that made her famous.