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CABARET REVIEW
Susan Anton Convinces With Her Voice
By DON HECKMAN, Special to The Times

What comes to mind when the name Susan Anton is mentioned? How about: tall, blond and beautiful with a spectacular smile; or maybe the 1979 movie “Goldengirl” or the TV series “Baywatch”; and what about that Perfect Buns infomercial?

All of those, for sure, but not necessarily singing, even though Anton has spent the past five years or so as a guest star with the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes in Las Vegas and has headlined at Manhattan’s Rainbow & Stars cabaret room. But neither those appearances nor a hit album in Japan has exactly brought her to the forefront of the music world.

So it’s not surprising that skepticism was in the air when she opened a two-week run at the Cinegrill on Wednesday. But all doubts were swept aside before she had finished her first number. That’s how long it took for Anton to make a convincing case for herself as a first-rate musical talent, her warm and supple voice enhanced by an intelligent, imaginative performing style.

Moving easily from rich, confident blues phrasing that recalled the best of Bonnie Bramlett, she was warm and intimate with inner-looking numbers such as “In My Life” touchingly sensitive with special items such as “For My Wedding” and “The Things We’ve Handed Down.”

Her program, in fact, was a winner on all counts: the far-ranging choice of material, with selections from Bob Dylan and Lennon-McCartney as well as a number of compelling songs from unfamiliar songwriters: a superb and completely empathetic musical setting provided by a quintet that has worked with Anton for more than a decade; and, above all, Anton’s upfront skill, her easygoing manner and warm communication. Looks may count and they’ve obviously taken Anton a long way, but it’s her unexpectedly stunning musical talent that makes her vastly more than just another pretty face.

Copyright 2001 Los Angeles Times

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Concert Review
By JULIO MARTINEZ

A confident and engaging song stylist who wasted no time winning over the Cinegrill audience, Susan Anton displayed an admirable vocal flair as she flowed through an eclectic range of tunes. She certainly knows her way around a country song, offering adroit renderings of Shirley Eikhard’s “Something to Talk About”, the popular Don Williams hit “I Believe in You” and a hard-driving “What It Takes.” Anton also proved she can turn on the passion as she emoted her way through the torch ballad “Since I Fell for You” and offered a sensually intense “29 Ways,” enhanced by the backup harmonies of her band.

Dressed casually in black shirt and slacks, the actress and Vegas showroom star sat through practically the whole set. ”The ceiling’s too short,” she laughed. That didn’t stop her from romping joyously through the Glenn Frey/Jack Tempchin rocker “True Love,” the Stax/Volt standard “When Something Is Wrong With My Baby” and the blues swinger “Highgate Shuffle.”

Anton exudes the youthful glow, vitality and physical allure of a 20-year-old, yet proudly proclaimed that she’s just turned 50. As if to place a parting emphasis on the need to live a positive life, she concluded her show with Bob Dylan’s prayer-like “Forever Young.”

Anton is more than supported by her five-piece ensemble: Pianist Greg Hilfman offers sensitive, mood-enhancing backing on the waltz ballad “The Color of Roses” and Michael Cuneo’s acoustic guitar complements Anton’s deep-voiced outing on the Lennon/McCartney classic “In My Life.”

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Susan Anton
One Night
Varese Sarabande

Reviewed by Brent Simon

Stage, film and television veteran Susan Anton, who has appeared in everything from Broadway’s Hurlyburly to Making Mr. Right, Baywatch to Quantum Leap, is also…quite a singer. And no, I’m not talking about one of those over-produced Jennifer Lopez type voices. Anton has a powerful, heartfelt timbre, and it’s on affecting display on the concert release One Night, the distilled result of many nights, actually, a two-week engagement last fall at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel’s legendary Cinegrill. The giddy, headlong rush of disc opener “Already Home”, in which Anton’s effusive energy takes center stage, starts things out nicely. She soon gives sassy country and maudlin balladry a whirl, to less successful effect on “29 Ways” and “The Things We’ve Handed Down”, respectively, but the comfortable Beatle’s “In My Life” (like Eric Clapton crossed with a Sanka commercial – which, despite how it might sound, I mean in a good way) and sweetly sentimental, “The Color of Roses” (in which Anton sings that “only ones who believe ever see what they dream, [and] ever dream what comes true”) go a long way toward righting the ship. Some of the selections make for a less than cohesively ordered album, and Anton doesn’t add much to a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”, whose power remains in a muted understatement not on display here. Nevertheless, One Night with Susan Anton is time well spent, a fun and jazzy aural stone skip.

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