Performing Arts

12:02 PM CST on Monday, March 13, 2006

By LAWSON TAITTE / The Dallas Morning News

IRVING – It would be positively un-American not to love this year's Dallas Divas!

REX C. CURRY/Special Contributor

Catherine Carpenter Cox (third from left) delivers a spirited 'Wonderful Guy' during Friday night's Dallas Divas!

Lyric Stage's annual pair of concerts featuring nine of the area's top musical theater stars opened Friday at the Irving Arts Center. This time around, the songs are all by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. This composer and lyricist – a half-century ago, at least – defined the homespun ideal of the optimistic American character.

This Dallas Divas! really takes you back in time, because it shows off the Irving Symphony Orchestra, led by Jay Dias, in the original pit orchestrations of the eight shows from which material has been chosen. It's thrilling to hear the strings, reeds and brass sing out melodies from South Pacific and The King and I.

It's pretty darned thrilling to hear the nine choice divas onstage sing them out, too. Vocally, this may be the most consistent Divas to date. Julie Johnson's "Bali Ha'i" resounds from top to bottom of her range with organ-like tone, every musical phrase and every word exquisitely shaped. Catherine Carpenter Cox belts out "Wonderful Guy" with a brassier sort of pizzazz.

A less familiar figure on our stages, Jodi Wright, shows off a beautiful vocal instrument in "Come Home" from Allegro (an R&H rarity that Lyric Stage mounted a few seasons back). Sally Soldo, usually the diva of divas at these affairs, sounded a bit out of sorts vocally in her first number, "Hello, Young Lovers." But toward the end she turned out the most heartfelt, less pretentious "Climb Every Mountain" in memory.

No doubt Mr. Dias, an experienced New York conductor and composer, helped the singers turn in such polished performances. But over the years Dallas Divas! has evolved past the point of a mere stand-up-and-sing affair. Each performer creates a little world with her songs – and for that we have to thank stage director Cheryl Denson.

Jennifer Pasion morphed into that Arkansas nurse Nellie Forbush right before our eyes in "Cockeyed Optimist." Dara Whitehead Allen broke our hearts with Carousel's "What's the Use of Won'drin'?" Kia Dawn Fulton looked every bit the princess in a couple of songs from Cinderella. Laurie Bulaoro skillfully switched moods from jaunty to wistful in numbers originally sung by two different characters in Flower Drum Song. Lois Sonnier Hart showed us how to stand by our man in "Something Wonderful."

But then, all nine divas, seemingly without effort, gave us something wonderful.

E-mail ltaitte@dallasnews.com

Repeats at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Irving Arts Center's Carpenter Performance Hall, 3333 N. MacArthur Blvd., Irving. Runs 105 mins. $29. 972-252-2787, www.lyricstage.org.