Ann Hampton Callaway: Finding Beauty – Inspired Classics and Originals continues at The Pheasantry, London until 25 November 2023.Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★As a borderline obsessive admirer of the incredible talent that is Ann Hampton Callaway from the first moment I saw her at the Pizza On the Park at the start of the 1990s, you cannot expect an unbiased review from me. And you’re not going to get one.
But if you think I exaggerate what this versatile and frequently funny American singer/songwriter/impersonator/pianist brings to the table with a depth of voice and range once heard and never forgotten, then head off down the King’s Road, catch Liz Callaway’s big sister – “5ft 10 and worth the climb” – during her four-day residency at The Pheasantry, then tell me I’m wrong.
Because this is a cabaret from the gods, a show that has everything. In fact, two shows for the price of one, the first Mostly Seventies, the songs that inspired her growing up from Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Marvin Hamlisch and the Bergmans, Alan and Marilyn, to James Taylor (who she had a teenage crush on) and Paul Simon, with John Lennon for an encore and Streisand as an acting model; the second, Mostly Originals – the pick of her own rich, gorgeous creations, some of which started out as one-a-day poems written during Covid when locked away in her adopted Tucson home.
These sumptuous ‘Anndards’ headline the first all-Callaway songbook Finding Beauty: Originals Volume 1, an album title that hints there might be more to come now that she has finally, as a recent inductee of the Women Songwriters Hall Of Fame, come to believe what she is – right up there with the very best. But absent friends like ‘Where Does Love Go?’, ‘I’ve Dreamed of You’ and ‘Gaze Into Your Eyes’ – the old ones are the best for some of us – need to come under the warm embrace of a definitive collection.
‘I’ve Dreamed of You’ was Streisand’s serenade to James Brolin at their 1998 wedding and earns lyricist Callaway an honourable mention on Page 811 of My Name Is Barbra, the just-published 992-page autobiography – Callaway drops in “just imagine a 48-hour audiobook” accompanied by a wickedly accurate impression of La Streisand.
Of those on the 16-track album, it is ‘Hold You in This Song’ which most commanded my attention in the Pheasantry concert, a number she wrote as a poem during the pandemic about the power of love in adversity with an insistent driving piano beat that sticks in your head.
Also outstanding: ‘New Eyes’, written with Melissa Manchester, about two people giving their relationship a second chance, and the sweet ‘Information Please’ (lyrics by Amanda McBroom) from a true story in Reader’s Digest about a little boy who forges a lasting relationship with a telephone operator.
Judging from the rapt expressions on the faces of two of my grandchildren, 14 and 16, the magic of AHC appeals to all ages, some far removed from her own. You could hear a pin drop, then she would pick it up with an all-join-in song like ‘Be the Light’, everyone waving their lit-up mobiles in the air to make a tableau of harmony.
No Callaway session is complete without her trademark Help-Ann-Write-A-Song game where the audience is tasked with slinging unconnected words and phrases at her and she turns them into an impromptu song roughly (very roughly) making sense. It is unique to her as far as I know.
One trouble-maker on opening night suggested “another dodgy review” to her as one component but she neatly sidestepped that and had everyone eating out of her hand at the end with a mash-up of Lennon’s classic ‘Imagine’ with her own sublime ‘At the Same Time’, best known as a track on Streisand’s Higher Ground album.
There was an earlier Streisand influence in Act I with ‘The Way We Were’, the title song of the hugely successful 1973 movie that made Streisand and Robert Redford a mint. It was pure bliss from Streisand but Callaway somehow managed to knock it further out of the park. As my elder daughter, who has worshipped at AHC’s feet for almost as long as I have, observed: “Such a strange sensation seeing someone do it even better than what we all thought at the time was a flawless original.”
That’s what Callaway does with all these 1970s covers. Treat them with respect but find that little bit extra in them so the audience sees them in a fresh light. Joni Mitchell’s ‘A Case of You’ pitched to new heights, a gospel-infused ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ we aren’t expecting, ‘The Secret O’ Life (is enjoying the passage of time)’ is a line of simple beauty by James Taylor and a thumping ‘You’ve Got a Friend’ with full audience participation bringing the first half to a standing O, later surpassed by the ‘Imagine/At the Same Time’ double encore, an inspired crescendo from a inspiring lady, still driven to bring love, harmony and peace to a troubled world.
Never more troubled than now and, as she points out, there are still almost 70 nations which criminalise homosexuality, which is punishable by death in some countries. The rousing ‘Love and Let Love’, a stirring human rights/LGBTIQA+ anthem written with another regular Pheasantry visitor Michele Brourman, has been going great guns released as a single and from the Thanksgiving Day reaction with all the American visitors standing up and clapping on the second night, is doing its causes proud.
Next up for Callaway is a debut in Paris, something else to tick off the bucket list. She is doing Sirens of Swing at the Le Son de la Terre jazz club on 30 November and 1 December. Meanwhile, don’t miss the biggest bargain in London town. While West End theatres are charging five and ten times as much for good seats, two golden hours of the finest voice in the business await for just £25. Amazingly, seats are available. Do not delay!
Jeremy Chapman
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