This Soprano’s Range Includes Rock

Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl, Alice Ripley sang in a high, fluttery, musical-theater soprano for a concert staging of “Show Boat.”

Monday at the Knitting Factory’s AlterKnit Lounge, she sang with a dusky, focused rock wail in a program of her own songs.

The juxtaposition provided a fascinating study in this rising Broadway star’s range and adaptability. Anyone who had seen her in petticoats and ringlets playing a dreamy-eyed showboat captain’s daughter would have had trouble reconciling that image with the barefoot, guitar-strumming rock chick who poured her broken heart into a microphone.

But there she was, the same yet oh, so different.

In her downtime from a theater career that has included a Tony-nominated performance in “Side Show” and Los Angeles appearances in “James Joyce’s The Dead” and last summer’s “Carousel” at the Bowl, she has taken to writing songs.

Most of the material in her 12-song set came from her new solo CD, “Everything’s Fine.”

Her melodies are folk rock, often with a bit of country flavor, while her lyrics evoke the ache of loss (“we’re like bones of the same skeleton/always trying to reassemble and find ourselves”) and the restlessness of life in the suburbs (“they’ll borrow and steal/but they’ll never reveal in suburbia”).

The result is a little bit Joni Mitchell or Janis Ian, but it’s not enough to distinguish her in this day of such powerful women singers as k.d. lang, Sarah McLachlan and Alanis Morissette.

What’s more, the songs on Monday quickly dissolved into sameness, and the concentration that Ripley devoted to playing acoustic guitar robbed her of the acting skills that might have put the tunes across more effectively. Though sighs and moans colored her voice, her face remained blank.

It was only when she finally put down her guitar and let drummer-husband Shannon Ford and guest keyboardist Gregg Karukas take over the accompaniment on her song “Drive” that tears sparkled in her eyes, earning her especially heartfelt applause from the family, friends and fans packed into the club’s small, alternative lounge.