HELEN SCHNEIDER SINGS A FLAPPER’S CLASSIC SONGS

Singer Helen Schneider has managed, in her young life, to be everything from a folk blues singer to a German rock star. Stretching her considerable resources even further, she opened Tuesday night at the Cinegrill in a one-woman cabaret presentation titled “A Flapper’s Folly.”

Loosely structured around the late-1920s life and times of an aspiring (but fictitious) singer named Lily Walker, the show links together 16 classic songs with dramatic readings by Tina Landau, who also directed.

In action for virtually 90 minutes, with John McMahon’s elegant piano playing as her only accompaniment, Schneider revealed a surprisingly penetrating understanding of such period numbers as “Side by Side,” “Ain’t We Got Fun” and “Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love” (all done with cupid bow-lipped flapper giddiness).

She was even better on ballads. “Thinking of You,” “Lover Come Back to Me” and “If I Had You” were sung with a clean airiness that both defined their period beginnings and confirmed their timelessness.

In her dramatic interludes, Schneider made the most of Landau’s sometimes awkward staging. Asked to carry both sides of a series of head-on confrontations with her lover, Frankie, Schneider relied on impeccable timing and a few carefully measured gestures to flesh out the script’s lack of emotional density.

If the evening had a problem, in fact, it was with the presentation, not with the singer. “A Flapper’s Folly” needs more humor. Schneider has an antic way with comedy lines, but they’re simply too few and far between.

The show also needs to find dramatic focus. In the rare instances when Schneider (as Lily) seemed to personify a metaphor for the emerging feminine consciousness of the ‘20s, everything came together.

If she and Landau can invest that metaphor with the intensity that the music already has, “A Flapper’s Folly” will be one of the most provocative evenings in town. Schneider continues at the Cinegrill, Tuesdays through Saturdays, until Oct. 30.