Review: Hannah Jane Firing On All Cylinders With HERE I GO at Don't Tell Mama

October 30th, 2019.  That was the first time I ever saw Hannah Jane.  She was being presented with the Julie Wilson Award at the Cabaret Convention.   She wore a white beaded ballgown with her hair cascading around her face in soft curls.   She was the picture of youth and innocence, wholesomeness personified, a teenager in the six-to-seventeen range, not the eight-to-nineteen window.  A kid.

September 14th, 2026.  Hannah Jane steps onto the stage at Don’t Tell Mama with her coming-of-age cabaret HERE I GO.  She wears a neat and tidy bob, a jean jacket, a leather bustier, and work boots.  Hannah Jane is not a teenager anymore; she is not a kid; she is a woman who has done some growing up, and she has come to tell the story of that growth. 

As has been documented by her cabaret career (one that has been surprisingly assertive for one so young), Hannah Jane knows her way around a standard, a showtune, and a Disney soundtrack, and although she is now twenty-five (per her dialogue) and an adult, that little girl still exists inside of her heart, even if she is all grown up.  As if to illustrate the duality of transitioning from a little girl to a woman of the world, HJ has structured her cabaret play in such a manner that we, her audience, get to see the bloom blossom before our very eyes.  Opening number “The Fairy Godmother Song/I’m Confident I’m Insecure” is very sweet - it’s upbeat, it’s quirky, it’s bright, like a song a musical theater kid sings for their TikTok account… but HJ and her team (Director Karen Oberlin and Musical Director Shane Turner) wisely pivot immediately with the song “Bitches” so that the audience is told, right out of the gate, what the story is that they are about to see.  It follows right proper cabaret structure, with the first cut introducing the headliner and the second number setting the tone for what the play is about.  So the story actually doesn’t begin until the third number, “Return To Pooh Corner,” which comes with a show-and-tell segment introducing all to her Princess blanket and some of her childhood couch kids.  We are looking back at Little Hannah as she becomes today’s Hannah, and what better way to bring us into the present than trading in Pooh for some truly grown-up material - an engagement, a selfie, a broken engagement, a cocktail, and a stunning performance of a mashup of Oliva Dean’s “Man I Need” and “Another Life” from The Bridges of Madison County - the number is an evening highlight that shows off HJ’s vocal prowess (truth: that prowess is ever-present).  Anyone who hasn’t clued in to the fact that this is, in fact, a play is, at this point, firmly in the picture.  From this point forward, sit back and enjoy the ride.

HERE I GO is filled with great music being performed by a prodigious talent, much of the music from the Broadway stage, from shows like Shrek, Mean Girls, Floyd Collins, and Bridges… but Hannah makes sure to stick to the theme that she is growing, and, to that end, so have her musical tastes, which is why there is music in the show from Billy Joel, Yebba, Lawrence, and Sammy Rae (there’s even some Weird Al Yankovic, but that is strictly a novelty number, natch), and although HJ moves, with ease, between genres and styles, she is particularly resonant while performing original material that has a personal meaning to her because, surprise, surprise, the compositions are either of her own creation or that of mentor Meg Flather.  Two of the tracks in HERE I GO are Hannah Jane originals titled “Texas” and “Running,” and, for those numbers, Hannah plays for herself on both piano and guitar, and although her piano playing skills haven’t yet reached the level of her genius Musical Director (Shane’s fingers fly like an Olympic athlete), it is vastly valuable that she play for herself on her own compositions, especially since this is a show about growing up, because artists don’t just grow up as people; they grow as artists.  They need to play their own stuff, and they need for us to see them play their own stuff.  Both of these musical moments in the proceedings are more than impressive: they are important.  The compositions are, by the way, rich with visuals in the lyrics and emotions in the melodies, not unlike the Meg Flather song that gives the show its title, which leads one to wonder if Mentor Meg is having casual (or formal) discussions with Hannah Jane about the life and work of a woman songwriter.  It would not be a surprise, as HJ has a wealth of female mentors in her life, from mom, Steffanie Myers Petterson, to Flather, to Oberlin, all of whom have proven wise guides for the young woman (a rather lengthy ‘thank you’ section at the end of the program called out all three, along with the rest of the HJ inner circle).  Oberlin has, particularly, stepped up to the plate, making sure that Hannah’s work on the piece, from the writing to the performing, is authentic, honest, and entertaining, and although the dialogue can seem, at times, a little deliberate, it is good to remember that this is a play and allow the performer to be performative.  She’s a storyteller, and her beats have been measured out by herself, as the writer, by Oberlin, as the director, and by Turner, who, as her MD, isn’t just her accompanist - he is her onstage partner, complete with dialogue and singing.  The trio has constructed a fully realized piece of theater (with a stellar assist from Tyler Arle on Guitar, Austin West on Cajon, and Kelly Wohlford, whose lighting design reads like that of a play on the legitimate stage). 

Hannah Jane has proven herself, time and again, as a force with which to be reckoned.  She has one of the best voices in the business - not only trained within an inch of its life, but beautiful, and beautiful to listen to - but she has shown us, from the very beginning, that she hasn’t just got a working understanding of the storytelling aspect of being a cabaret artist; she has an intentionality about her storytelling.  She doesn’t just pick a bunch of songs she likes to sing and throw them into a show.  That’s fine for some performers, and those performers rock that style of show, but it isn’t what Hannah Jane wants.  She thrives in the play-within-the-cabaret lane.  It’s where she wants to be, and it’s where she wants to create.  It’s where she may feel comfortable, but she isn’t about being comfortable: she wants to step out of her comfort zone; otherwise, she wouldn’t share, so readily, stories about broken engagements and therapy- stories that are personal and private, but that can (as the great Carrie Fisher always said) “take your broken heart and make it into art.”   And before readers grab that word (therapy) and latch onto the well-known term ‘therapy cabaret’ (it’s a real thing - Google it), let this devotee of the art form assure all that HERE I AM is not therapy cabaret.  It’s a piece of theater that allows the audience to get to know the artist (a major plus in cabaret and concert) while listening to fantastic musical offerings, and, in this very specific case, one of the benefits of listening to twenty-five-year-old Hannah Jane’s story is that it reminded this somewhat cynical, supremely overtired sixty-two-year-old of the excitement and promise that he once felt, right around the same age.  To that end, Hannah Jane’s HERE I AM is more than a cabaret - it’s a time machine that will give some of us (some of you) seventy minutes of a feeling you haven’t felt in a while, and may have missed.  Just a little something extra for your twenty bucks.  All this, Hannah Jane, and a Princess blanket.  What a bargain.

Hannah Jane returns to Don't Tell Mama with HERE I GO on October 5th at 7pm.  Tickets can be accessed HERE.

Hannah Jane has a website HERE.

Photos by Stephen Mosher

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