I walk out of Jane Keller’s final solo musical show – her fifth in 25 years – sorry that the 72-year-old has decided to pull the curtain on her talent. On a Sunday afternoon, Circa Two is packed with a mainly boomer and senior crowd who seem to be familiar with Keller’s rare mix of solo singing and storytelling with relatable themes.

On the glittering stage beside her is the very talented pianist, Michael Nicholas Williams, who has collaborated with opera-trained Keller since 2001 on her five sold-out solo shows, including Do I Have to Get Naked?, Boomers Behaving Badly and Sundays at Ira’s. [More]

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A couple of decades ago, when I was writing for the National Business Review, I wrote of Jane Keller’s Bigger is Better, that her “singing is impeccable. Her easy-to-listen-to clarity gives flight to the whimsy, comedy, satire and pathos inherent in the lyrics.” And yep, she and her co-creating accompanist, Michael Nicholas Williams, have still got it.

Amid Jane’s highly valued career as a singing teacher, voice coach and performer in larger cast musicals, and Michael’s as a musician, musical director, composer and arranger, the pair have put together six cabaret shows.* Leave ’Em Laughing, is a revue-style ‘musical memoir’ that reviews the previous shows – and it’s billed as “Jane’s final show”. Final solo show, let’s say – she will still be active in those other areas, I trust.

Once more I thoroughly appreciate the intimacy and the lack of amplification: just Jane chatting and singing with Michael accompanying on an acoustic upright – positioned so we can see his lively fingers dancing over the keys. The setting, dressed by Jane and Meredith Dooley, suggests a garden bar with pot plants and a statuesque golden gown recalling a past highlight of her career.

The unmistakeable voice of KC Kelly, the dramaturg for this and previous shows, does the pre-show announcement – and he has a ‘voice of God’ moment later too, adroitly inserted by the lighting designer and operator, Deb McGuire.

Leave ’Em Laughing is bookended with ‘Alto’s Lament’ in two parts, comically revealing the lot of Jane’s ilk who never get to sing the melody – unless they create bespoke (besung?) solo shows like this. Jane’s tribute to Michael in her programme note includes, “He plays in terrible keys so that I can sound good.” This makes their shows deliciously unique among other solo cabaret shows – and of course there is nothing terrible about them.

The first full song is tragi-comical: ‘Fifteen Pound Away From My Love’ satirises a man’s inability to warm to a plus-size woman despite her innumerable excellent qualities. That comes from Jane’s first solo show, tried out in her home town of Columbus Ohio on 14 September 2001 – yes, three days after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre. Wrestling with the question of whether it would be bad taste then realising people needed a reason to smile serves as the segue into ‘Shattered Illusions’, where a woman keeps discovering the truths behind a series of male facades. One particular sexual proclivity leads to a very funny anecdote …

Then the laughs give way to the agonies of High School years: the dreaded Phys Ed “Now captains, pick your teams” trauma (‘Last One Picked”) and a girl ringing a boy (‘Hello, Tom’) to ask him to be her Junior Prom date. The poignancy and pathos which enrich good comedy a well to the fore by now.

It’s important to note that this is not an autobiographical show, Jane didn’t write these songs (musical colleagues are in awe of her talent for finding them) but she has chosen them because they are relatable – not only for her to but for us as well. She also threads mentions of her husband and family throughout the performance so that we recognise she’s role-playing while singing the songs in the first person.

Most of them touch on the universal human experience of needing connection and looking for – or losing – love. In counterpoint, ‘I Regret Everything’ feels like a celebration of rampant independence which may or may not be regrettable. But a medley of sad songs – ‘Out Of Love’, ‘Where Do You Start’, ‘Since You Stayed Here’, My Favourite Year’ – consolidates the central theme.

Whoever said they don’t understand irony in the US of A hasn’t heard the upbeat ‘My Simple Christmas Wish’, which closes the first half of the show. It expresses a desire to make it big as a singer without having to work for it. Undoubtedly the smiles that leaves us with relate to the moments we’ve privately wished for a similar free ride to fulfilment and fame.  

‘Speaking French’ (from a 1988 musical called Lucky Stiff) offers a delicious opening to the first half. Completely unrelated, despite the stiff reference (it’s a dead body in the musical), ‘Getting It’ starts off delighted at a husband’s rejuvenation via Viagra … until it proves too much of a good thing.

We get a dose of fresh nostalgia with the story of how Sunday at Iras (see below) had to negotiate Covid-related obstacles before finally opening, albeit with socially distanced audiences. The answer to dealing with all the uncertainty was, apparently, ‘Vodka’ – to which we get to sing along, briefly.

The phenomenon of divorce parties is traversed with ‘I Never Really Liked You All That Much’. To offset its bitterness we get a touch of sweetness with ‘Out of Practice’ involving a woman and man finding their feet and each other, after years away from the dating scene.  

And so to part two of ‘Alto’s Lament’, replete with snippets of Broadway Musical songs where Jane is obliged to counterpoint the melody lines we all know so well. Again the hilarity is tinged with pathos. And yes, it does leave us laughing.

That’s the closest we get to well known songs, yet although we may not know the songs Jane and Michael delight us with, we do know the experiences they evoke. Leave ’Em Laughing is relatable, heart-warming and hilarious. The curtain call song is ‘I’m Still Here’ and the resounding applause attests to the audiences’ pleasure that they are – for one last season, so don’t miss out.
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*Jane’s other solo shows, co-created with Michael Nicholas Williams and mostly reviewed by people more musical than me, have been: Do I Have to Get Naked (2006), So Many Disappointed Men (2009), Boomers Behaving Badly (2010), Yep, Still Got It (2015) and Sunday at Ira’s (2022).

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