Wilson, McBroom Hit Dramatic Note

Oh, the drama--the fists raised to the skies, the voices thick with emotion, the eyes welling with tears. Such were the carryings-on Sunday at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre as singers Julie Wilson and Amanda McBroom traded note for note, passion for passion.

In most ways, this pairing of highly theatrical performers--Wilson, one of the greats of New York cabaret, and McBroom, a favorite in the Southland--proved complementary.

It tended, however, to put McBroom at a disadvantage, for Wilson’s style is so over the top yet so grippingly real that it made McBroom’s big gestures and go-for-broke emotion seem calculated and staged by comparison.

In the first half of the double bill, Wilson performed the music of theater composer Stephen Sondheim. Wearing a body-hugging, black lace gown and wrapped in feather boas, Wilson--in her late 70s, yet sporting a figure that even Jennifer Lopez should envy--looked ready for a production of Sondheim’s ode to long-ago, Ziegfeld-like glamour: “Follies.”

This torchy elegance provided the perfect context for a pairing of songs from “Merrily We Roll Along.” Emotion made her voice even huskier than usual as she fused glowing nostalgia with surging regret in “Good Thing Going,” then raced through the strings of adjectives in “Not a Day Goes By” before throwing herself off the song’s cliffs of feeling.

Singer-songwriter McBroom followed with a set of mostly her own material. Blessed with a smooth-as-silk, dusky soprano, she had the more pleasing, technically proficient voice. Still, the lurid, ripped-from-the-headlines emotions of songs such as “Baby in a Box” and “Scars” ended up ringing hollow.