Pop Reviews : Crowd of Divas at AIDS Benefit

“Divas: Simply Singing!,” a benefit Sunday for the Minority AIDS Project at the Masonic Temple, was a virtual love feast of warm, affectionate interaction between a collection of female performers who clearly savored each other’s work. With a cast that included 29 vocalists and brief turns from comedians like Marsha Warfield, it was inevitable that the evening move in fits and starts, with predictable technical problems.

But the high points were worth the awkward pacing and recurrent microphone failures. Best of all were unexpected moments, like the appearance of virtual unknown Jenifer Lewis, who very nearly stole the show with a brilliantly satirical medley built around the old standard “You Came a Long Way From St. Louis.”

More predictably, Freda Payne, the most magnetically poised of the divas, gave a reading of “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered” that was a definition of superb nightclub singing. Mary Wilson’s understated but powerful “I Will Survive” and Marilyn McCoo’s dramatic “I Dreamed a Dream” were equally impressive in quite different styles.