POP CAPSULES : BROWN-OUT

In her black, ruffle-hemmed sheath, Weslie Brown looked like Liz Taylor in the role of an edgy ‘50s nightclub singer. But the music she performed Friday at the Lhasa Club jumped all over the map--Broadway, torch songs, art song, jazz, Motown, blues, opera. And while everything might have a familiar reference point, Brown sets it all at odd angles and bathes it in strange colors. It doesn’t always work, but no one is doing anything quite like it, and she appears to be pulling in a good crowd at the Hollywood coffeehouse-cabaret.

Brown calls her act “theatrical jazz,” but it’s more of theater than jazz. She played most of her set Friday strictly in character, fixing the audience with neurotically intense gazes and linking her songs with stylized stream-of-consciousness monologues.

This approach risks preciousness, and Brown sometimes succumbs--in one spoken segment, her tone and inflection were unfortunately reminiscent of TV horror-film hostess Elvira. But elsewhere, as in her dissection of “the vulnerable man,” her aggressiveness yields compelling theater.

Vocally, Brown’s disciplined technique sometimes leads to overly formal passages, but when she tempers that tendency with her inventive eclecticism, she provides both artistry and entertainment. Brown, accompanied by pianist Andy Howe, returns to the Lhasa Friday.