Cabaret in Review: Pack a Wallop, Hold the Sugar
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Maureen McGovern, Oak Room at the Algonquin: It takes a special combination of qualities for a singer nowadays to be able to carry off the big inspirational ballads of Rodgers and Hammerstein without seeming either too saccharine or too grandiose, since these Broadway warhorses already tend to push the envelope of sentimentality. But Maureen McGovern, whose newest cabaret show, a tribute to Richard Rodgers, opened at the Oak Room of the Algonquin Hotel on Friday evening, is one of the few singers with the sensibility and vocal capacity to put them over.

Her show, which plays through Oct. 14, divides Rodgers's catalog into thematic blocks, concentrating more on his collaborations with Lorenz Hart at the beginning (one segment examines Hart's attempts to circumvent direct expressions of romantic love), then turning attention to his work with Oscar Hammerstein II. A segment demonstrating Rodgers's fondness for waltzes includes an amusing description of Jeanette MacDonald, the so-called iron butterfly, singing "Lover" while astride a horse.

In another high point Ms. McGovern, accompanied on piano by Jeff Harris, adopts a chilly English accent to deliver "To Keep My Love Alive," Rodgers and Hart's word- perfect comic monologue of an upwardly mobile serial murderess. Her versions of "It Never Entered My Mind," "This Nearly Was Mine" and "You've Got to Be Taught" (wound around a fragment of Stephen Sondheim's "Children Will Listen") find an ideal balance between clarity and a wistful lyricism.

It all builds to a medley of Rodgers and Hammerstein songs exalting hope and perseverance that begins with "A Cockeyed Optimist" and culminates with "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" and "You'll Never Walk Alone." Here the secret is restraint. Ms. McGovern's beautiful semi-operatic voice, perfect enunciation and innate sense of propriety prevent her from turning the songs into gushy showcases for a phony show business empathy. In allowing the songs to breathe, she brings them to emotional life.