Album Review: LIVE IN LONDON, Marisha Wallace

Marisha Wallace, Broadway’s current Sally Bowles, has had a career in New York and London marked by starring roles in musicals about women surviving tough circumstances. As we find out in her debut live recording, Live in London, her own life hasn’t been much different.

There’s no time for gently easing in the audience in this live recording of the Dreamgirls and Guys & Dolls alumna – one number in, and Wallace, 39, declares that she was told as a teenager she would never sing again due to a cyst on her vocal cords, leading us into a life-affirming performance of the gospel-infused "Mysterious Ways" from The Color Purple. The Lord works in mysterious ways, indeed.

Over the course of the album, we’re taken through Wallace’s early years as a struggling actor, her difficult marriage and divorce, and her subsequent move to London (she’s now, she proudly tells the audience, a British citizen!). Prayer, faith, and perseverance have been her recurring touchstones amidst these struggles, and so in her live show she lends her vocal chops to "Shine" and "The Gods Love Nubia" from Aida, among other gospel or gospel-inspired numbers.

At its best, this album can be a religious experience in the literal sense. When we get to Wallace’s tender yet resolute rendition of "And I Am Telling You" as the first act finale – Dreamgirls marked a turning point in her life both professional and personal, as her contract in the 2016 West End production precipitated her divorce and her first job in London – it feels just as cathartic (maybe even more so) as its original production context.

This doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t plenty of room for North Carolina-born Wallace to veer beyond the confines of her gospel roots, and demonstrate her versatility across the spectrum of musical theatre and beyond (the show is bookended by Whitney Houston and Etta James medleys). She has numerous ‘first Black woman to play [insert role here]’ accolades to her name – her turn as Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret, and as Adelaide in Nicholas Hytner’s Guys & Dolls – and the album’s second act is a great showcase of the new twists she brings to roles long established in the canon.

"Take Back Your Mink" allows Wallace’s comedic timing to take centre stage, while her ‘I Cain’t Say No’ pleasingly uses many of the vocal flourishes from the re-orchestration of Oklahoma! used in Daniel Fish’s revamped Young Vic production (which Wallace starred in). When she finally arrives at her most recent role, in Cabaret, Wallace’s performances of "Maybe This Time" and the title number display her skills in a lower, jazzier register.

It’s a live recording in every sense of the term, and Wallace is relaxed and warm in her crowd work, laughing about her bad taste in men and pointing out the amusing cultural idiosyncrasies of her adopted home in the UK. Sometimes, the transitions between audience applause and Wallace launching into her next number can feel slightly too hurried, and the links between Wallace’s signature numbers and the major milestones in her life a little too tenuous. This is redeemed, though, by the touching moments of onstage camaraderie between Wallace and her former Waitress castmates Lucie Jones and Laura Baldwin, who join her for the sweet trio "A Soft Place to Land" (especially poignant given the death last year of their co-star, Gavin Creel).

As Wallace marks a triumphant return to Broadway for the first time in a decade, this album is not only a virtuosic catalogue of the roles that have shaped her career, but a paean to life’s twists and turns and how we endure them.

Listen to Marisha singing "I Cain't Say No" from the new album here.

Marisha Wallace: Live in London is out now

Act One https://s.disco.ac/fizajwzwngvr

Act Two https://s.disco.ac/bgdgdsenvrre

Main Photo Credit: Danny Kaan