"An evening of American popular song with a special centennial salute
George Gershwin"

Partly as a result of Kate Lang's recent enquiry, I was overcome today with
a desire for Gershwin. I descended into the depths of the Barbican and came
back with Al Jolson.

The Gershwins, by the way, are full of quotations, like Hamlet, another
melancholy, doomed young man.

Michael Feinstein has the reputation of an intellectual among popular
singers. He was Ira Gershwin's archivist, he sings the words as written,
without babies and heys, and he covers a wide range of "classical" popular
music -- tonight's programme included standards  (As time goes by) and
interesting rarities (You come from Rhode Island, which names increasingly
fantastic products of each of the other American states) as well as a good
selection of the Gershwins in the second half. He performed in the Barbican
hall with no set, a single spot and a competent six-piece band.

But while his single-button velvet and cloth tuxedo might have been
tasteful for Vegas, it was slightly too tight and irredeemably naff for the
Barbican. His sound system was better than the Barbican's own, but still
homogenized everything, as did his performance to some extent. He was
either relentless and loud or sincere and croony, with nothing much in
between, whatever the song. He also used some other pop mannerisms such as
singing a fairly even melodic line on a single pitch. And his high notes
were often little more than a wheeze, even with the amplification.

There was also something disconcerting about some of his choices. After
beginning with a promisingly boisterous Let me entertain you and a
breakneck Nice work if you can get it, he did a set with misogynist
overtones: a comic number called Hungry women, a version of Largo al
factotum about fat women, and a pairing of The tender trap and Making
whoopee as a single story. He ended the evening with a crack about George
and his lovely wife Ira and the song I believe, explicitly sung by a gay
man, but he also made the missing beloved "she" in Someone to watch over
me. (I hate that hymn to co-dependency. It sticks with you like love for
the wrong person.) Maybe he was trying to ease the generally conservative
audience in gently, starting with vaudeville camp and moving via romance to
Gershwin's personal situation. But there seemed to be something defensive
about the way he introduced Hungry women as a "bad song". It's actually
quite funny, unless you think there's inherently something wrong with women
eating.

Feinstein's obvious positive quality, though, is that he loves the songs,
and he especially loves the words. He hit the spot with I won't send roses,
from Mack and Mabel, a clever characterization of an egotistical swine
getting sentimental for a moment. He dug up a full version Too marvellous
for words, an exercise in logomania beyond anything Porter or the Gershwins
ever did. While he got only broad-brush emotion out of the mainly Gershwin
second half, sentiment and yearning, he delivered the words with
considerable skill. They just sounded clever rather than pregnant. I was a
little bit impressed that he said during a request session that he wouldn't
sing Send in the clowns because he'd sung it too often.

In spite of his cerebral reputation, however, Feinstein was at his best
when he got closest to the true brass of the old music hall. He did a
rousing job of the simple transformations of Alexander's Ragtime Band. And
he ended the first half with a pretty good all-Jolson set, and a stunning
version of George Gershwin's first song, Swanee, which stands out from
Jolson's other standards with its evocative verse with its blues modality
and the restless tonality of its chorus.

But, although tonight's programme was broadly similar to that of Kim
Criswell's Wigmore Hall performance last year, Criswell has it by a mile.
Not only is her singing in a different league, technically and
expressively, but she also has an aggressive intelligence, not just
aggression trying to be ingratiating. Criswell could do the Barbican,
probably without a mike. But I can't see Feinstein doing Wiggy.