Review: Eva Noblezada Performs Personal NOSTALGIA: A LOVE LETTER TO NYC at Audible/Minetta Lane Theater

It takes a lot of cajones for a 26-year-old singer to title her cabaret concert NOSTALGIA, but then not many singers have already gone through what Eva Noblezada has. From her childhood being a MexicAsian (as she calls herself) in San Diego to her two Tony nominations in her adopted hometown (the show is subtitled: A LOVE LETTER TO NYC), Noblezada goes through everything with her audience at this Audible-produced concert, to the point where she wonders out loud if maybe she shouldn't share so much. She is still young.

Noblezada is playing hooky from her full-time job at "Hadestown" (taking a couple of the orchestra members with her) to give us an intimate and musically diverse evening. The Minetta Lane Theater stage has never looked so much like an intimate coffeehouse, and in fact, when she enters wearing two of what the kids call "the boyfriend shirt," you could almost feel the Norah Jones vibe emanating from her in aura and voice. But then she adds some Sia-like belts, and it's clear you can't put Noblezada into easy boxes.

This powerhouse singer and actress first came onto our radar when she was discovered at a high school singing competition in 2013 to star in a revival of "Miss Saigon" in both London and New York, garnering a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut. Four years later, she took the same route, this time in the Anaïs Mitchell musical "Hadestown," earning her second Tony nomination in 2019. But just like the rest of us, Eva had a lot of time to reflect on her life during what she calls the Parallelogram (i.e. the pandemic), and a lot of her free-flowing thoughts in the show are about overcoming struggles and being positive, even when life feels randomly against her and her love for New York City.

Noblezada utilizes her nervous energy for this solo show, which you will also be able to hear as her show's being recorded by Audible Theater as an Audible Original. Between all the chatter about her life are her eclectic song choices, which oscillate between some traditional cabaret songs and her "nostalgia" for the late nineties and early aughts "Lilith Fair" fare. She does come from jazz stock (her father is a professional alto saxophonist), which, after some groovy contemporary songs (some in Spanish) that start the show, Noblezada gives us in her first standard: a snappy version of "Cheek to Cheek," inspired by her father's love of Ella Fitzgerald.

After suffering from vocal nodules problems at the start of "Hadestown" in 2019, she found strength when she heard Maggie Rogers' "Back in My Body" at, of all places, a Soul Cycle class, and her version was quite lovely, infusing the pop song with a warmth and vulnerability. Other pop songs Noblezada covers that the mostly Gen Z audience loved hearing were a boppy "Lovefool" by the Cardigans and the infectious "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, which made the singer nostalgic for going to Spencer's at the mall with her severe bangs as a teen.

Besides a soulful version of "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" (another Fitzgerald influence), it seems we theater fans would have to settle for hearing her piercing and clear voice only in these pop songs. Or so I thought. Her finale and encore were quite the surprise as she and her musical director/pianist Rodney Bush picked two songs from a Broadway songwriting duo, usually associated with a Broadway icon, that brought down the house. I don't want to spoil it for anyone waiting to hear her Audible concert, but the first song is iconic and will be heard on Broadway later this spring. It felt like a very earnest choice to end the concert proper, but all her chatter sort of led up to this song, and her delivery with a commanding belt was a stirring conclusion.

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