CARABET REVIEW : Wilson Displays Striking Emotional Focus

Cabaret, at its best, is musical theater in miniature--the dramatic sweep and the musical flow of the stage reproduced in a diminutive cameo.

Julie Wilson, who starred on Broadway in “The Pajama Game,” “Kiss Me Kate” and “Jimmy” and earned a Tony nomination for her role in Peter Allen’s “Legs Diamond,” knows a lot about the Broadway stage. But she also has the capacity--more rare than one might imagine--to refocus her skills from the larger-than-life gestures of the theater to the intimacy of the nightclub arena.

Tuesday evening before a nearly full house at the Hollywood Roosevelt Cinegrill, Wilson began a two-week run with a program that was a typically striking illustration of her mastery of the cabaret format.

Elegant in a black, beaded gown, Wilson looked characteristically, if deceptively, cool and detached. She did almost nothing in the way of choreography or staging, nor did she make the kind of direct eye contact that is so intrinsic to cabaret performers such as Eartha Kitt.

But, if the impact of her singing was less upfront, it was no less effective. Rather than rely on physical presentation, Wilson poured everything into her musical readings--changing timbres and vocal registers, bringing entirely new meaning to phrases by accenting single words, adding drama with the slight movement of a hand or a shift of her body. It was a remarkable display of the manner in which a performer can generate more effect via contained, emotionally focused renderings than with the arm-waving, Vegas-style high note climaxes that are far more often heard.

Wilson is also an exceptional programmer. Her show was titled “Are You Having Any Fun?” and ranged from such attractive if somewhat less familiar tunes as “This Time the Dream’s on Me” and “Hey, Look Me Over” to a Gershwin medley and Noel Coward’s brilliantly wicked “In a Bar on the Piccolo Marina.” Singing “Here’s to Life,” a relatively recent song that has quickly become a cabaret standard, she cast it in an illuminating new light, bringing tinges of anger and bitterness to a number that is usually done as a survivor’s anthem.

It was a superb evening with a brilliant artist. Wilson’s rare visits to the Southland make her Cinegrill appearance a must-see for fans of the too-little-appreciated art of cabaret.

* Julie Wilson at the Cinegrill in the Radisson Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd. (213) 466-7000. Tonight and Sunday at 8 p.m., $15; Friday and Saturday at 8 and 10:30 p.m., $20. Two-drink minimum. Wilson sings a completely different program titled “Songs About Men,” Tuesday through Jan. 27.