I’ve seen Ali Harp­er before, at Old St Paul’s in 2012, and I was struck by her humour and pro­fes­sion­al­ism then.  It was a fun night out with my Robot Mum and we both enjoyed hear­ing songs we knew, and some we did­n’t, per­formed by someone who knew her craft and was super skilled.

On Sat­urday night, The Look of Love opened at Circa, and I was delighted to be able to take my mum along again.

Ali Harp­er is a bit of a nation­al treas­ure – cab­aret, act­ing, music­al theatre; she does it all.  But she also cre­ates her own shows and records albums, which I think is pretty baller.   She’s not just a par­ti­cipant.  She’s a BOSS.

The small stage of Circa One was well-lit, with mic stands placed at dif­fer­ent points to allow Harp­er to move around and share her per­form­ance with the whole audi­ence.  The live accom­pani­ment were Tom McLeod expertly play­ing piano and Cal­lum Allardice nail­ing the gui­tar.  But Harp­er knows that Bachar­ach needs an orches­tra, needs a horn sec­tion, and needs back­ing vocals, so she recor­ded fant­ast­ic arrange­ments, work­ing with the esteemed Tom Rainey, to back it all.

Was it weird to have two musi­cians onstage and the rest pre-recor­ded?  Ini­tially, yes.  But it gave her, and us, a lovely intim­ate dynam­ic between her and her onstage musos, and as she said her­self, she could­n’t have fit (or afforded) the whole cast onstage.  Plus the record­ing exper­i­ence meant she was able to pro­duce an album for the show.

The boys were clearly hav­ing a good time and both sang as well as play­ing, McLeod hav­ing his own very com­pet­ent solo time.  Harp­er is a gen­er­ous col­lab­or­at­or, and an appre­ci­at­ive one, giv­ing them repeated cred­it and love for their sup­port and their tal­ent.

So we embarked upon a jour­ney, with Harp­er provid­ing bio­graph­ic­al detail around Bachar­ach’s life and devel­op­ment as a com­poser.  She referred to the research she’d done and it was very clear she’d done it with affec­tion and respect.  I love that so much.  How he came up, how he col­lab­or­ated with his lyr­i­cist Hal Dav­id, his mostly ter­rible lovelife, and how he pushed to make his music chal­len­ging, inter­est­ing, and dif­fer­ent.

She also gave great respect to the artists who made his songs fam­ous;  Mar­lene Diet­rich, Dusty Spring­field, Dionne War­wick, Aretha Frank­lin.   Admit­tedly, her Diet­rich impres­sion left me a little cold but that’s just a low damn voice to try to emu­late, and while Harper­’s range is impress­ive, it felt a little dense down there.

Some­times a per­former who’s worked a lot in music­al theatre can be a little jazz hands and fake smile.  While the pro­duc­tion is great and all, it feels like they’re just per­form­ance robots going through the pro­gram­ming to eli­cit the appro­pri­ate response.

Here’s the thing, though.  Ali Harp­er is a freak­ing extraordin­ary vocal­ist with stu­pendous cha­risma.  That’s clear, no one can deny it.  BUT she was also obvi­ously hav­ing a ball and lov­ing every moment of what she was doing.  She loved her col­lab­or­at­ors, she loved the music, and she loved us, the audi­ence.  She was basic­ally there, in the spot­light, look­ing a mil­lion dol­lars in her sequins, genu­inely thrilled that THIS is what she gets to do for a job.  She gets to sing songs that make her happy, for people who get happy as well.  She looked out at us, and no part of her smile was fake.

I don’t need to talk about Harper­’s voice.  She’s been doing this for the last 20+ years and she KNOWS her craft.  I saw her 9 years ago and was impressed, but now I’m just speech­less.  It felt effort­less.  I doubt it was, but DAMN, she just opened her mouth and magic came out.  She drove her mic like NASCAR.  I’m basic­ally on my knees chant­ing “I’m not worthy!”

Ali Harp­er got to do some­thing really cool.  She got to make a show, and a REALLY good show, based on a com­poser who was a form­at­ive part of her own life soundtrack.  She was so clearly, and so tan­gibly delighted to be singing Bachar­ach’s songs.  She wanted to give him respect and cred­it.  She wanted to share with us her love of those songs.  She knew she could­n’t replace the artists we hear in our heads when we think of the songs – those artists ARE the songs.  But she paid homage to the cre­at­ors and the artists, and she also made each song her own.  And when the whole stu­dio was stand­ing up, hold­ing their phones up with the flash­lights on (some of us had to show our mums how to put the flash­light on), she was just so full of joy. She was like.… You guys get it.  You love these songs, too!  Let’s sing togeth­er!  Isn’t this freak­ing won­der­ful?!

Yes, lady.  It WAS freak­ing won­der­ful.  And thank you so much.

Ali Harp­er has a whole-ass month of this show so if you like music, or love, or people, or…   OK, if you hate life, don’t go.  Every­one else, get amongst it.  It’ll make you smile.