Wherever she is, the American jazz and show singer Dee Dee Bridgewater behaves as if she is in Las Vegas. Her act is full of photogenic poses, stagy joshing with her band, and Shirley Bassey-like dynamics that suggest she is trying to be heard in the next galaxy. As a straight jazz singer, she can be spectacular: untroubled by the fastest tempos, expressive as a tenor saxophone on ballads. But Bridgewater is trying to get away from her Ella Fitzgerald typecasting, and has boldly, though not altogether securely, decided on the songs of Kurt Weill as a way out.
Her declared intention is to enlist jazzy spontaneity to lift the spirits of Weill interpretation, avoiding the usual sepulchrally operatic manner. With a mostly French ensemble at the Barbican, her success was mixed. All Bridgewater's considerable virtues - broad range, driving swing and roaring attack - seemed in storming working order on the opener, I'm a Stranger Here Myself. But September Song turned into a Latin shuffle that brought out Bridgewater's occasionally nagging showtime mannerisms ("These precious days I'll spend with youaaaahhh!"). Her clowning version of Mack the Knife wasn't funny enough to justify either subverting the original, or departing from the Ella version, of which Bridgewater can make a superb account. And her long monologue in Eurotrash Franglais to introduce a French-language tango made the rear end squirm a bit.
All Bridgewater's old jazz-swinger's relish returned, however, on a raucous, blues-blasting version of Alabama Song. And her rich low-register sonorities, subtle pitch control and expressiveness on such ballads as Speak Low and My Ship almost made up for the stretches of a kind of brash tentativeness, where she sounded as if she wasn't quite sure she was doing the right thing.
Some astonishing Hammond showmanship from Thierry Eliez, and the fleet sax improvisations of Daniele Scannapieco lent spontaneity to Bridgewater's sometimes indecisive show. But the most seamless supply of unpredictability came from the support act, New York pianist Rachel Z: her contemporary trio put all kinds of lateral spins on the songs of Joni Mitchell. Z can take just about any mainstream materials and turn them into startling art. By contrast, Bridgewater confirmed on this occasion that she can be a little too adept at taking startling art and turn it into mainstream material.
