Songs For Nobodies

Website Review

Judy Newmark – JudyActTwo, February 4, 2020

Small Plays Take Aim at a Wide Range of Tastes

Last week, I saw four shows between Thursday and Sunday.

Believe me, that’s not close to my personal record. But it’s a lot. It’s more than most people want to see, and who could blame them? To go to that many shows, that quickly, you need to be a junkie or a critic.

I am not a junkie.

Sometimes people ask me if they blur. No kidding! But there wasn’t much blurring this past weekend, which did not involve either disasters nor masterpieces. Instead, it included four decidedly different productions, each with its own distinct voice. Here’s an overview:

The entertaining one: That’s Max & Louie’s production of “Songs for Nobodies” by Joanna Murray-Smith. Max & Louie favorite Debby Lennon plays 10 different characters in this show: Half of them iconic singers, half of them ordinary women who have each has a brush with a great vocalist she admires.

Under the direction of Pamela Hunt, Lennon performs hits by performers from Patsy Cline to Maria Callas. That makes “Nobodies” Lennon’s own tour de force, and her range is astonishing. But her performance as an actor who portrays five ordinary, utterly individual women is at least as impressive as her singing.