Review: Betty Buckley at McDavid Studio
There was really no need for Betty Buckley to be nervous.
“I don’t know why I always get so anxious about singing here,” the Broadway diva told a packed house that included her mother, Betty Bob Buckley, during the first of her two shows at McDavid Studio on Saturday.
“I grew up with most of you.”
Because even though Buckley’s fame and talent have long since made her the property of the world, we have always been proud to know she is one of our own. And judging by the warm comments Buckley made between numbers in her 85-minute show, she is still happy to call Fort Worth home.
The concert, titled In My Own Backyard, From Broadway to Ghostlight, was such a celebration of local ties that when she name-checked various musical heavyweights, such as legendary music producer T Bone Burnett and the late Stephen Bruton, she also noted the high school they attended and where their grade stood in relation to hers.
In addition to sorting the Paschal kids from her classmates at Heights, Buckley sang a few numbers with the able support of pianist Christian Jacob. Her set was about evenly divided between her 2012 CD, Ah Men! The Boys of Broadway, and last year’s Ghostlight, which Burnett produced.
The selections were heavy on haunting ballads where longing and regret do battle against the resilient forces of flickering hope, with the winner still often uncertain in the final verse. Among the standouts of this type were Jacques Brel’s If You Go Away and the less well-known Throw It All Away.
But Buckley also put a bit of a bounce in her voice on numbers like Blue Skies and The Surrey with the Fringe on Top, one of many Broadway chestnuts Buckley borrowed from the guys for this concert.
Buckley’s voice was in fine shape in terms of its power and agility. While she did not display a broad range, the 67-year-old singer hit every note she went for. She is too experienced to try to make her voice go anywhere it does not need to go. What she brings to the table, now more than ever, is the ability to live within the world of a song and make that world live and breathe for an audience.
She did that through all of Saturday’s performance, which was her first at the cozy McDavid Studio. And then, for the encore, she brought out her big gun: Memory from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats. As the first actress to play Grizabella in that show on Broadway, she owns that song.
Hearing her carefully style and then, ultimately, totally let go as she artfully worked through her signature classic was an incredible experience — no matter what high school you attended.
This story was originally published March 28, 2015 at 8:40 PM with the headline "Review: Betty Buckley at McDavid Studio."