Pop Music Reviews : Love’s Ups, Downs With Marlene VerPlanck

If Marlene VerPlanck can sing a paean to a soup, a soap, a sauce or a cigarette, she can certainly do even better justice to a Berlin, a Kern, a Bacharach or a Porter.

The New York jingle queen, who has been going public with increasing frequency of late, turned her first-ever Los Angeles performance, Wednesday at the Cinegrill, into a conducted tour, telling a song-by-song story of the vicissitudes of a love affair, complete with brief narrative links, using Johnny Mandel’s “A Time For Love” as bookends.

It’s a near-perfect act for this attractive, small-featured woman with her short-cut red hair and sparkling white gown. Her professionalism never sacrifices emotional depth. She respects each song while feeling free, here and there, to add a modulation upward, suspend a line or toss in a wordless ending. The two decades of studio work have not limited her personal appeal; her movements add a gentle visual charm.

It helps, of course, to have a husband who writes all the arrangements; in fact, Billy VerPlanck also co-wrote two of the songs. His wife displayed unerring sensitivity in dealing with a lyric, whether the outrageously witty “Come Back to Me” by Alan Jay Lerner or the cool and the charming “Nice and Easy” (by the Bergmans, who were in the room) or John LaTouche’s “Taking a Chance on Love,” in which she took melodic chances with the Vernon Duke melody.

Toward the end the premise wore a little thin, and one wondered whether it might have been wise to include a few songs without narration or thematic bond. But then came “A Time for Love” and this delightful hour was over. Joe Harnell at the piano, backed only by a bassist, Steve LeFever, did justice to each of the neatly packaged arrangements.

Every singer in town owes it to himself/herself to study the artistry of VerPlanck, whose total confidence and composure could provide a role model for many. She continues tonight, resumes Wednesday and closes next Saturday.