Janie Dee’s Beautiful World Cabaret at Crazy Coqs continued with an enjoyable fifty-five-minute programme from Carly Mercedes Dyer, accompanied by an outstanding trio of piano, bass and drums.
Carly told the audience that she fell in love with singing and dancing at school, eventually ending up at the Arts Educational Schools in London.
She is perhaps best known for playing Emma in the Barbican’s production of Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, but she has deservedly had a very busy musical career, having taken part in productions of A Chorus Line, Assassins, The Drifter’s Girl, Gypsy and Shug Avery in The Color Purple, amongst many others. It was fascinating that she included an item from The Color Purple in her cabaret.
Other numbers, well known and less so, included a steely interpretation of the Gershwin brothers’ “Summertime” from Porgy and Bess which revealed a surprisingly rich mezzo-soprano voice. The jazzy, brassy, quality in her singing was exemplified in “Sunny” where her expressive face aided her communication with the audience. She seemed to be happier in the more upbeat songs such as “I want more, nothing better than more” and, for me the highlight of the evening, Irving Berlin’s “The sun in the morning and the moon at night” from Annie Get Your Gun, which she started as if it were a big romantic number before increasing the tempo.
Lesser-known songs included “Nothing is Too Wonderful” from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Between songs Carly discussed such environmental topics as buying/wearing “pre-owned clothes”, giving second-hand presents to friends and relatives, and food waste, all reminding me of a tin of my aunt’s homemade shortbread which I was given for Christmas one year, gave away a few months later, only to get it back from a totally different source two years afterwards! By that time, it was almost inedible!
There sometimes appeared to be too much talking between musical numbers, especially as Carly had friends and relatives sitting at the front centre tables, and, from where I was sitting, occasionally appeared to be conversing and joking just with them rather than the entire audience, which was a shame. The final fifteen minutes or so of the programme seemed to lose momentum to a certain extent because of the preponderance of speech rather than music, for example the inclusion of an extended extract from a play, read from a script, whereas one felt that the cabaret needed more energy at this point so that it ended on a “high”.
However, on the whole, this was another success for Beautiful World Cabaret and demonstrated the breadth of Carly Mercedes Dyer’s undoubted skills. Janie Dee is to be warmly congratulated for collating such a wide variety of artistes for this season at Crazy Coqs, and, if you missed it, she and her friends are at Charing Cross Theatre from June 21 for three weeks: that should be well worth seeing!
Review by John Groves
Carly Mercedes Dyer is an Olivier Award-nominated British actress celebrated for her dynamic musical theatre performances. Her notable roles include Cassie in A Chorus Line at Leicester Curve, Erma in Anything Goes, and Anita in West Side Story.
BEAUTIFUL WORLD CABARET WITH CARLY MERCEDES DYER
Crazy Coqs
27 May 2025
Presented as part of the Beautiful World Cabaret Festival, 13 to 28 May 2025
