photo by Steve Savage
Sharon McNight
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Singer Sharon McNight has, happily, come back to sing to us this month, her voice as brassy and beautiful as ever, in a seven-performance engagement, at the Metropolitan Room in Chelsea, for a retrospective called "The First 30 Years (From Moose Hall to Carnegie Hall)," which brings back so many memories. Pianist Ian Herman assists.

Still boldly defying eastern cabaret tradition by including country/western music, McNight begins with Willie Nelson's "Night Life (ain't the good life, but its my life)" and Tammy Wynette and Billy Sherrill's "Stand By Your Man." Sharon shares a longtime signature tune, Nan O'Bryne's "Sweet and Shiny Eyes," which she says she sang at the Reno Gay Rodeo and to which she invites singing along. She also welcomes us to join in on the refrain of Steve Goodman's "City of New Orleans," a cheerful number about hard luck.

Drawing on her "Songs to Offend Almost Everyone" CD, our diva introduces, with a sweet soprano vocalise, "(You are) Contempt Beneath My Feet," a wicked parody, which she wrote with Michael Greer, of Larry Henley and Jeff Alan Silbar's uplifting anthem for Bette Midler, and laments, in a touching torch song, "Everybody's Fucking But Me." She follows these delightfully rude numbers with a sincerely moving "Sometimes When We Touch," by Dan Hill, which she refers to as "the lesbian wedding song," having received notes from many women who, before same-sex marriage became a possibility, had played her recording of it at their union ceremonies.

The singer pays tribute once again to the late great Sophie Tucker with George and Ira Gershwin's "The Man I Love," which includes a virtuoso solo for pianist Herman, who also gets to shine in Billy Joel's "I've Loved These Days," Sharon's we've-gotten-through-it-all-somehow finale.

Before she takes her leave, however, Sharon delivers her beloved tour-de-force of the first scene in Oz from "The Wizard of Oz," doing all the voices-wide-eyed Judy Garland, sugary sweet Billy Burke, deliciously evil Margaret Hamilton, and various distinctive munchkins-in all the dialogue and Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg songs "Come Out," "Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead," and "Follow the Yellow Brick Road ... We're Off to See the Wizard

McNight caps all this with Mary Liz McNamara's "Vegetarian's Lament," giving way, during an earnest vegan presentation, to ecstasies about the joys of "b-b-b-bacon!"
Catch Sharon McNight on March 15 at 9:30 p.m., 19 at 9:45 p.m., 20 at 7:30 p.m., 21 at 7 p.m., and 22 at 9:30 p.m. at 34 West 22nd Street. The cover charge is $20, plus a two-drink minimum, so visit www.metropolitanroom.com for more information or to pre-pay on line, or telephone 212/206-0440 for reservations.