Review: Janice McCune's LET'S START TOMORROW TONIGHT! at Don't Tell Mama

Janice McCune describes her life in cabaret as a second-act discovery. In her 40s, she took a Cabaret Performance Workshop with Helen Baldassare and went on to perform in group shows at Don’t Tell Mama and The Duplex (from 2007 to 2017). In 2022, she was a Cabaret Fellow at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center and has appeared in a variety of cabaret settings ever since. Last spring, she made her solo cabaret debut at Don’t Tell Mama, and recently she has returned with encore performances.

Let’s Start Tomorrow Tonight! offers a wide-ranging song list—one of cabaret’s great pleasures. Where else can you hear Broadway standards coexisting with Carly Simon, Whitney Houston, Billy Joel, and Irving Berlin?

“See” may be the more accurate verb than “hear,” because what McCune does best is step fully into a song, committing herself to the emotional world of its lyrics and bringing them vividly to life. Surprisingly, acting credits are not part of her formal background beyond school and community theater. If cabaret is truly her act two, one might easily imagine act one having been spent as a working actress.

Her strongest moments came with Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” a jazzy reimagining of “I Gotta Crow” from Peter Pan—featuring delightful scatting in place of the traditional crowing—and Irving Berlin’s tender “Count Your Blessings.”

As a singer, McCune’s voice is whispery and airy, supported more from the mouth and throat than the chest or gut. When pitch occasionally wavered, or notes missed, she compensated by speaking through the lyric or selling the moment with sincerity and story-telling commitment.

There were occasional song choices that didn’t quite align with what she does best. I wish director Lennie Watts might have offered a stronger, more supportive guiding hand. Opening with the British Kiki Dee Band’s “I’ve Got the Music in Me,” and later tackling Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” I half-expected Will Ferrell’s Marty Culp to join her as Ana Gasteyer’s Bobbi Mohan-Culp. Perhaps McCune was more interested in the message of those lyrics rather than the authenticity of such musical expectations.

Additionally, some of her set-ups to songs lacked any sense of comic timing or had an abundance of sentimentality. She introduced one song by telling a story of her friend who was grieving his father’s recent death. He was convinced a certain song was a message for both of them from their deceased fathers—which led into Disney’s “A Whole New World” from Aladdin.

Hard to dismiss, Janice McCune possesses a genuine sweetness, her spirit infused with gratitude, smiles, and an almost effervescent perkiness that occasionally called to mind a grown-up Shirley Temple. She spoke fondly of playing Peter in Peter Pan as a student. No doubt, it was perfect casting, which made me wonder if she had ever played Annie. Though belting out “Tomorrow” would surely require reinvention as a hushed whisper—but one suspects she would’ve delivered its optimism with sincerity and heart.

The marvelous pianist John Fischer also served as musical director, with Chris Bonner on electric bass, and Zachary Eldridge on drums.