“VOICE LESSON”: Princeton Summer Theater has concluded its season with “Voice Lesson.” Conceived and performed by Allison Spann (above), the one-performer show ran August 1-3 at Princeton University’s Hamilton Murray Theater. (Photo by Michael Muchnij)
By Donald H. Sanborn III
Princeton Summer Theater has concluded its season with Voice Lesson, a solo show conceived and performed by Princeton University alum Allison Spann. Vince di Mura, the resident musical director and composer for the Lewis Center of the Arts, accompanies Spann on keyboard. The performance ran August 1-3 at Princeton University’s Hamilton Murray Theater.
Voice Lesson is a title that is coy and deft, masking a versatile cabaret of musical theater, opera, and pop rock. “Voice” is has a double meaning; it refers both to the literal instrument and to a singer’s personal outlook and aesthetic style.
The program, which consistently is brilliantly conceived and tirelessly executed, uses as its frame a concept that Spann knows too well: a performing artist, who has given much of her life working to hone her craft, trying to succeed in an industry vastly changed by a digital, post-pandemic age.
Part of what makes Spann’s linking narration so successful is that she skewers the challenges our current culture poses for artists, but she also satirizes stereotypically self-entitled “diva” attitudes. “I’m not famous … and I’m going to make that your problem,” she quips early in the show.
A Cranbury native who attended Princeton High School, Spann holds a BA in music from Princeton University (magna cum laude). She has performed in numerous Princeton Summer Theater productions, including The Great Gatsby (2022).
Spann’s website details her multifaceted work in music and theater. She is a “multi-genre vocalist, actor, composer, music director, sound designer, and director.” She is a winner of the Princeton Concerto Competition; and the Edward T. Cone Prize in Music (for music composition, performance, and scholarship). Now based in Brooklyn, Spann teaches at her private music studio. Recounting this bio almost is unnecessary, as Spann shows, not tells, her varied and considerable skills in the course of her performance.
Voice Lesson shares a set with PST’s production of Frankenstein, whose run also concluded this past weekend. Like Frankenstein, Voice Lesson makes use of a white curtain, with Spann performing the first part of the concert in silhouette. This allows for a nice visual metaphor; as the singer’s face is revealed, so are facets of her work and personality.
A jazz flavor pervades the arrangements of the first few numbers. Irving Berlin’s “Blue Skies” (originally interpolated into Betsy, 1926) opens the show, immediately displaying Spann’s pleasing vibrato and feisty exuberance. Eventually Spann steps in front of the white curtain, revealing an elegant red and black outfit.
The opening number is followed by a medley. Written by lyricist Alan Jay Lerner and composer Frederick Loewe for Brigadoon (1947), the exhilarated “Almost Like Being in Love” has a line, “Like a bell that keeps ringing for me.” This dovetails nicely with “If I Were a Bell,” which composer-lyricist Frank Loesser wrote for Guys and Dolls (1950). Spann shows deft care in selecting and juxtaposing songs.
“No One Else” (2012) is written by Dave Malloy for Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812. This wistful ballad is followed by a bit of wry commentary — she notes that she graduated from Princeton University in 2020 (which she jokes was a great time to be trying to break into live theater).
During the pandemic, theater performers shared their work in one of the only formats available to them: videos posted to their social media accounts. Now, not only is it expected (perhaps even required) for artists to have robust pages — but, Spann observes, each video ideally should demonstrate what they can do within 30 seconds. Spann has a great deal of fun with this. She performs a brief, provocative dance to a segment from a rock recording; and broadcasts the concert on her Instagram page.
Just as Spann opens the concert using the curtain from Dracula, she avails herself of the vertical space offered by that production’s scaffolding, letting it represent a small apartment.
It is from this “apartment” that Spann sings Stephen Sondheim’s somewhat operetta-esque “Green Finch and Linnet Bird” (1979) from Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Up until now, the songs generally have been in the middle of Spann’s range; here, she gets to show off her high notes. The line “Teach me how to sing” obviously is an apt fit for this concert; and the theme of isolated confinement (“How is it you jubilate, sitting in cages, never taking wing?”) touches nicely on both Pandemic-era loneliness and a frustrated artist who wonders if their career ever will “take wing.”
This is followed by another Sondheim song: the frantic, rapid “Getting Married Today” (1970) from Company. A skilled pianist, Spann accompanies herself for this number.
The aria “Je dis que rien ne m’epouvante” from Georges Bizet’s Carmen (1875, words by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy) affords Spann (again accompanied by di Mura) an opportunity to display her command of opera repertoire. Once the piece is finished, it also allows her to add a comic bit that would not have been out of place in a concert by pianist and musical humorist Victor Borge: she insists on singing an encore of the final bars, so that an audience member can throw her a bouquet of flowers (that she provides). These flowers will be important later in the show.
Other comic bits include a microphone taking a preposterously long time to disconnect. She also feigns exiting the stage early, leaving di Mura to play a solo.
Interspersed with these segments are renditions of songs not written for a musical or opera: “Superstition” (1972) by Stevie Wonder, and “The Long Black Veil” (1959), written by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilken, and originally performed by Lefty Frizzell (and later popularized by Johnny Cash). A line from the latter song, “the scaffold is high,” aptly ties in with the scaffolding from the set of Frankenstein.
The concert feels like it is shorter than its actual hour. This is partly attributable to Spann’s charismatic delivery, and partly due to tight, brisk pacing. The pacing becomes (appropriately) unsparing as she matter-of-factly reflects on somber subjects.
She recounts an experience that is the subject of Water Play, which served as her senior thesis. A recent TAPinto Princeton interview explains, “In her sophomore year at Princeton, she developed psychogenic-aphonia — a condition where a person loses their voice due to emotional or psychological stress.” A Lewis Center synopsis of Water Play elaborates, “The voice, separated from her body after a sexual assault” must “fight her way back … through memories to reconnect with herself, connecting on the journey with other characters to find healing through togetherness.”
These themes also are explored in another original composition (music and lyrics) which Spann performs late in the concert, the anthem “All of My Lives.” As with an earlier selection, Spann accompanies herself.
The mood becomes comic again with a song by Charli xcx, “Party 4 U.” Sporting sunglasses, Spann uses the floral bouquet as a drumstick. This is followed by the hopeful “Maybe This Time” (1964), written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. This latter piece highlights Spann’s vocal power, as well as her stage presence.
The same is true of the rousing encore, “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” Written by Bob Merrill and Jule Styne for Funny Girl (1964), the song starts in Spann’s middle register but takes her into her upper range.
A central “lesson” Spann seems to want to teach has to do with balance. Just as a singer must balance the need to make art against the need to network, use of technological advances such as social media must not come at the cost of neglecting to attempt engagement with live audiences. Indeed, for all of the conversations that have queried live theater’s place in a digital age, the chance to hear Spann gives one the sense of reclaiming something that is being lost.
In earlier times — perhaps with different circumstances surrounding the arts — the multitalented Spann probably would have had numerous Broadway credits on her resume by this point. Spann aspires to perform Voice Lesson in New York; it is to be hoped that will come to fruition and lead to great things.
Whether Spann ends up performing in New York or elsewhere, it will be exciting to see (and hear) what she does next. For now, in more ways than one, she has helped PST end their season on a high note.
To learn more about Allison Spann’s work visit allisonspann.com. For information about Princeton Summer Theater’s future projects visit.princetonsummertheater.org.