Take the Moment to see Richard Barclay's latest show, and you will get a generous hour-plus of this raconteur of song. A charming entertainer, Barclay titles and opens his latest program at Don't Tell Mama with the Rodgers/
Sondheim tune, Take the Moment, and goes on to fashion a loose plot with the theme of recognizing and seizing the good times of life.

The show casually begins with a young teenaged boy about to take his first date to the prom. With tunes like Dinner at Eight and A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation, their evening takes shape. After stepping out at the Copacabana, a little slow-dancing with songs like You Go To My Head, the young man reveals that I Got Love and I Just Found Out About Love.

The well-paced show follows the young man through the ensuing years. Barclay and his music director/pianist, Rolf Barnes, select applicable songs to tell of growing up, gaining wisdom, learning disappointments, and finally realizing the importance of Take the Moment. Barnes himself contributes a well-crafted original song, There Was a Time, with a haunting melody.

The show's high spots include the Latin rhythms like a medley of Miami Beach Rhumba, I Got Rhumbatism and I Left My Hat in Haiti. A melancholy Time in a Bottle with Laura is an effective pairing, as is Sometimes a Day Goes By and There's Always One You Can't Forget. Barclay's baritone is strong, his show biz panache can often carry the mood.

Backed by a swinging pop-jazz trio of Barnes on piano, Boots Maleson on Bass and drummer Ricky Martinez, Barclay easily holds his audience. He is arguably most impelling in a medley recalling his days in the stage production of Carnival. With such a generous length show, he could easily close at this point and leave the audience with a potent message of time and love.

Elizabeth Ahlfors - CABARET SCENES

Performers looking for creative ways to fashion a show can take lessons from Richard Barclay. Combining many of his songs into mini-medleys, this silver-haired actor/singer offers an engaging, briskly paced show. His lively opening pairs the show's title number, Gordon/Revel's Got My Mind on Music, with the Gershwins' Fascinatin' Rhythm, after which, as a gentleman anticipating romance, he deftly links About a Quarter to Eight with Tonight At Eight, then later uses Latin-American rhythm as underpinning as he weaves in and out of Magic Is the Moonlight, There's No Room to Rhumba and Take It Easy. Alternating fast-moving numbers with reflective ones, and familiar songs with newer material, Richard, with comfortable but practiced showmanship, makes the evening speed by. Among highlights: a dramatic rendition of Everybody Likes You, from Carnival, sung by the puppeteer (a role Richard played in musical theater) to his puppet; David Friedman's gentle We Live on Borrowed Time, and two songs composed by his musical conductor, Rolf Barnes: There Was a Time and I Believe in Simple Things. Richard completed his engagement in mid-February; next time he's up, come look, listen and learn.

Peter Haas - CABARET SCENES

Singer Richard Barclay presented himself on this evening at Danny's with all the elements of a well nigh perfect show. He's completely at home with his voice, his look, his musicians, his song selections and their arrangements so that all these factors combine to give him freedom to just take stage and proceed to entertain his audience. He comes over as wholly professional but human and charming, lacking in guile. His mature good looks are a plus and if there were an award for Best Dressed Cabaret Performer, he'd win it hands down. Barclay brings the know-how developed in a career that encompasses leading roles in musicals on Broadway and in national companies, owning his own production company, Concepts Unlimited, and producing an Academy Award winning film and TV Specials for which he received three Emmys. When he produced soap star Eileen Fulton's cabaret acts, the cabaret bug bit and for the past several seasons he has appeared at Danny's and Judy's to great acclaim.
The sellout audience took to him right away as he opened up and bright with the obscure "Got My Mind On Music" (Mack Gordon and Harry Revel) coupled with the Gershwins' rousing "Fascinating Rhythm". Barclay and his musical director/pianist Rolf Barnes have very deft hands when it comes to putting songs together into interesting medleys such as that opener and they prove it several times in the course of the program. In each case, the performance of the individual songs is so good that each of them could stand on its own. Sometimes the act of combining two or more of them results in the whole adding up to more than the sum of its parts. For instance, Jerry Herman's "I Won't Send Roses" medlified with Sondheim's "Not A Day Goes By" and the very impressive "Sometimes A Day Goes By" (Kander & Ebb) with "There's Always One You Can't Forget" (Lerner & Strouse). Edward C .Redding's "The End Of A Love Affair" was kept from being lugubrious by being used as a lead-in to "I Don't Remember Christmas" by Malby & Shire). It would seem no New York cabaret act is complete these days without a piece of special material by the award winning songwriter Francesca Blumenthal. Dick Barclay has an especially fine take on her "Astaire" complete with adept dance movement which he followed with an Irving Berlin medley of dance tunes.
Everything worked. The biggest audience response was to a thrilling excerpt from Bob Merrills 'Carnival' in which Barclay appeared on Broadway. He actually stopped his own show with this one and it was a very special moment. All he could do was stand there and savor the appreciation of a crowd that carried on for a full two minutes and would not let him continue until they showed their feelings.
Rolf Barnes deserves much credit, not only for his arrangements and his conducting but for a grand song for which he wrote the music with a lyric by Alan Mount. Called "There Was A Time" and sung by Barclay with a slightly country western feel, it was a fine change of pace in the middle of the act.
Barclay will be back at Danny's in October. I hope you'll take my advice and watch for his opening and treat yourself and friends to what good cabaret is all about.

JAN WALLMAN -- ('Applause' Applause')