CABARET REVIEW : Vlahos’ Siren Power at Atlas

Inside the soul of many a soprano lurks a chanteuse--the real, torrid, love-is-all thing. Happily, Stephanie Vlahos is one who has become just that--she bills herself as “The Siren of the Supper Clubs”--and managed Thursday night at Atlas to transform the Wilshire Boulevard restaurant into a Parisian boite .

The mezzo’s other life, singing supporting roles with the Music Center Opera, was nowhere to be found as she went through her numbers in this French show called “Elle qui chante,” backed by a four-piece combo.

Leaning seductively against a balustrade and lit to great advantage, she began with a Poulenc song of smoky despair and made the whole room know that she was meant to do this.

Vlahos is a beautiful woman with voluptuous, distinctive features, a commanding presence and a voice that will do most of her bidding. When she belts the big, histrionic songs, finding drama to spare in her physical characterizations, there is no resisting her.

What she desperately needs is a production director to keep things simpler--her own pert coif instead of all those wigs; a single, flattering gown, not a wardrobe raid; smoother, cannier transitions.

In any case, the chanteuse does not need the fizzle-out experimentalism she appropriated, nor the large-screen text translations--a direct liaison with the audience is more engaging--nor, most important, the two, overly fleshy, pointe dancers garbed in Frederick’s-of-Hollywood finest, who create laughable kitsch.

The show continues, Thursdays, through Nov. 9.