What More DO I NEED?

It walks, it talks; it vamps, it camps; it does Mozart and Sondheim, Gershwin and Strauss. What more, indeed, could Kate deLima need? Singlehandedly, she's taken over Harvard musical theater; one could hardly imagine a "Marriage of Figaro" or a "Fledermaus" getting off the ground without her. Not to mention a one-woman cabaret act, complete with schmaltz, Catskills-style patter, and a big band.

Thus it was that Kate deLima began what must be, barring intervention by a philharmonic Ad Board, her last season of HRDC glory, at the Agassiz Theatre last weekend. (Needless to say, the HRDC standbys were there in force, hugging and kissing away; oh, where is our Hedda Hopper, our Liz Smith?) She sang ballads and love songs and novelty songs, slow songs and fast songs, Weill and Porter and Loewe and Bernstein, in addition to Gershwin and, what she said was her favorite (there's no accounting for such things), Sondheim. She strode on stage in front of the orchestra, futzed humorously with her red shawl, and broke right into "Nice Work If You Can Get It" without an awkward moment. She owned the stage -- a small stage, it's true, but she owned it nonetheless.

There were two things to enjoy in "What More Could I Need": the singing and the spectacle. The latter was more entirely successful. This was due, in large part, to the lighting, which did a better job of what it was trying to do than in any show I can remember seeing at Harvard; lighting designers Roxanne Lanzot and Alan Symonds created just the right mood for each number, always keeping the star in the forefront. In jazzier numbers, the lights displayed the members of the orchestra (all 15 of them), swinging in their tuxes; during the soupier songs, like Oscar Levant's "Blame It on My Youth" or Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me," the spotlight picked out deLima, glamorous in the darkness.

In one sense, there's no point in quibbling with the star's performance; nobody else that I know of could do such a show, and deLima did it well, with humor and grace. Like Winsome Brown of yesteryear (our short institutional memory allows no lasting monument to her toothy glory), she is the rare college performer who has the confidence and power to go it all alone.

Nevertheless, some observations should be made. DeLima's roles in Harvard opera have always been the grandes dames -- the Countess in "Marriage of Figaro," and in "Die Fledermaus" as well. That is to say, she has a solid operatic voice, better for power than for subtlety. (Even in this nightclub act, she wore a high-waisted Empire dress of the type made famous by Emma Thompson and Gwyneth Paltrow, an inappropriate but curiously telling choice, as if to declare that she's better suited for more aristocratic pursuits.)

This mismatch came out in the singing as well. While she had mastered some of the chanteuse's mannerisms -- especially a nasal tone in words like "door" and "more" -- she still tended to be too thin and loud in the high notes, and the pace of some songs was awkwardly slack. Which simply means that she doesn't have exactly the voice for this repertoire; who else comes as close?

What deLima did have, in abundance, was the willingness to make a show of herself, without which the whole evening would have been hopeless. She came down into the audience and pretended to berate an audience member (A plant? He bore it with too much grace not to be,) in Weill's wonderful song "I'm a Stranger Here Myself." That, incidentally, was the best performance of the night, allowing deLima to combine histrionics with an aggressive, loudish tone; in other words, to be operatic (it's no coincidence, I think, that Weill was also the only "serious" composer on the program).

Her choice of songs was largely excellent, including standards and some interesting sub-standards, like the Gershwin self-parody "Blah Blah Blah" and Leonard Bernstein's pattersong "I Can Cook Too." "Blah Blah Blah" particularly allowed deLima to camp it up, leading the audience in a sing-along while capering to the absurd lyrics. (The screen on which the lyrics were projected was a nice touch, too.) As for the four Sondheim songs, including three in a row at the end, they were not too big a price to pay for the rest -- which is saying quite a lot.

About the orchestra, as in most student productions, the less said, the better. To its credit, it was obtrusive only in the most difficult songs, like "I Can Cook Too." The arrangements were made by Rodney Lister, who also accompanied in some songs; in both capacities he was successful. Rumor has it that the whole show was put together in only a week, with two rehearsals; if so, the orchestra's performance comes to seem decent, and deLima's positively Olympian -- or, even better, Lenyan.