Every once in a while at her Laurie Beechman Theatre Diva's Lament stint, Annie Kozuch turns upstage and gives her hips a Gwen Verdon hip-hitch. In the glittery thigh-high dress she just about has on, she looks like an ad for Sweet Charity, the title role of which she could probably play blissfully. She also looks and sounds as if she could be Sugar in the musical of the same name adapted from Some Like It Hot.
Except that as she prances around the stage and kids the audience and hails the musicians she calls her Lamentations (Frank Ponzio at the piano, Hilliard Greene — or was it Peter Donovan? — on bass, and drummer Jacob Melchior), she doesn't come across as a smart dumb blonde. She registers as a smart smart blonde, quick-witted and funny. Kinda like a singing Gwyneth Paltrow.
When warbling, Kozuch is often as loose as some of the jazz arrangements she includes, although she never made it clear — to me, at least — why she's given her set the downbeat title. She did mention more than once that she has trouble with men. She confides with some humor that she figured at her age she'd be married with children. So it's probably her unattached status she's lamenting.
If so, it's only detectable in some of the songs that she Gwen Verdons and Gwyneth Paltrows. There's the reflective "I Thought About You" (Johnny Mercer-Jimmy Van Heusen) and Jay Leonhart's silly torch song "Beat My Dog," but just as often Kozuch is extolling love, as in "How Deep Is the Ocean" (Irving Berlin). She even starts off by extolling herself with the Sheldon Harnick-Jerry Bock "Gorgeous."
In a show constructed to seem thoroughly effortless (no director credited), she acts the tunes every bit as well as she sings them. This is especially clear in a medley of Noël Coward's bittersweet "Sail Away" and the Ira Gershwin-Kurt Weill "My Ship." Come to think of it, smart girl Kozuch could probably make much of the Liza Elliott role in Lady in the Dark.
By the way, some of Kozuch's laments and anti-laments are done in Portuguese and Spanish. Indeed, she begged off with "Somos Novios" (Armando Manzanero) without getting around to Sid Wayne's "It's Impossible" translation.
Presented by and at the Laurie Beechman Theatre,
407 W. 42nd St., NYC.
June 18-July 10. Remaining performance: Thu., July 10, 7 p.m.
(212) 695-6909.