REMINDER

MISCHIEF NIGHT, an evening of five play readings to benefit Animal Haven, will take place on Monday, October 30th at 7:30 at BPAC (Baruch Performing Arts Center), 55 Lexington Ave @ 25th Street (btwn Lex & 3rd Aves). Brian Fuqua, Laura Gillis, Nell Gwynne, Jonna McElrath, John Moss, and Dana Watkins will read plays by David Johnston, Griffin Miller, Clare Melley Smith, Judd Lear Silverman (that's me) and Sue Yocum (founder of Playwrights for Pets). Suggested donation is $10. For reservations, call 718-768-4213 or email gracomal@pipeline.com. (For more information on Playwrights for Pets, go to the website, www.playwrightsforpets.com.)

MUSIC

Build a Bridge, Audra McDonald, Nonesuch
As performing artists go today, they don't come much classier or with more talent than Audra McDonald, the beautiful lady who can sing and act with the best of them (as witnessed by four Tony Awards, an Emmy nomination, etc.). In interviews and on PBS pledge drives, she seems like a normal person and a mom, with a keen intelligence and extremely good taste. Best of all, she seems totally at peace with her gifts and comfortable in her own skin. Her albums thusfar have all been superbly produced with a rich selection of material, blending top composing talents from the theater, pop and folk with standards and classics around which Ms. McDonald can blend her velvety voice. (Check out, for example, what she can do with Jason Robert Brown's Stars and the Moon, a mini-play about misguided dreams and longing.) Her latest CD, Build a Bridge, is likewise a classy event, with songs by everyone from John Mayer to Randy Newman. Her voice remains an amazingly nuanced instrument and her diction and clarity are superb. Particularly wonderful are her simple, heartfelt versions of Newman's I Think it's Going to Rain Today, Joe Raposo's Kermit classic, Bein' Green, and Nellie McKay's whimsically satiric I Wanna Get Married. She also does well by the music of Neil Young, Rufus Wainwright, and the late Laura Nyro (especially on Tom Cat). Slightly more unusual this time around are a couple of misfires. God Give Me Strength, the Burt Bacharach/Elvis Costello ballad recorded by the likes of Bette Midler, Kristen Vigaard and Costello himself, should be a triumph for Ms. McDonald with its soaring melody and range of emotional colors, but it never seems to land in her voice or her key, disrupting a song of strong emotional build into a jumble of changes and a narrative mess. And Dividing Day, from Adam Guettel's wonderful musical, The Light in the Piazza, which should benefit from stark, simple reflection--something at which Audra McDonald excels--instead gets a little overdressed, and it shows. Still, these are excellent songs as befits her superb taste, and less than her best still is far superior than the average chanteuse, such that Build a Bridge makes another CD to add to your collection of class acts.