| Saturday 13 September 2003 |
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One thing you can't take away from Carey
Mariah Carey's concert at the Tower Theater on Wednesday night was like a Jerry Lewis telethon: an erratic show with chintzy production values and an odd bird whose taste for sappy sentimentality seems unbounded. Oh, there's the voice. Always the voice. At 33, Carey sings with the same remarkable range, power, expressiveness and agility that made her a star. Her bravura, if ostentatious, renditions of "My All", "My Saving Grace", and "Always Be My Baby" were arresting.
But although her rich repertoire includes 15 No. 1 hits, she chose to do some of her more misshapen and unpopular material, such as "Clown" and "Can't Take That Away". The latter, she said during the "interactive" portion of the show, was the consensus pick of her Philadelphia fans in an online vote. And you thought elections in Florida were rigged.
Carey unquestionably knows what to do with a microphone in her hands: knock down walls, shatter glass, and set every dog in Upper Darby barking with those scary high notes. But she doesn't have a clue what to do on a stage. Teetering around in high heels, she seemed so fragile and tentative that the evening felt like a Judy Garland concert. The avid, slightly less-than-capacity crowd at the 3,000-seat Tower (the show was originally scheduled for the Wachovia Center, which seats 21,000), roared when Carey attempted even the most rudimentary dance step. It went into paroxysms when she kneeled during "Can't Take That Away"
And it thunderously endorsed her maudlin song intros. She described "Through the Rain", for instance, as a statement of "hope and perseverance and pressing on and all that type of thing". At another point, she remarked, "My life is a theme song." The star seemed most confident and comfortable during a duet on "I'll Be There" with backup singer Trey Lorenz. (Carey may be the only performer ever to cover the Jackson Five and Def Leppard in the same program.) Let's face it: The woman needs support. And she wasn't getting any from her sloppy stage production, which included 11 dancers who seemed to have been recruited from the 69th Street SEPTA terminal.
And let's not even go into Carey's hoochie-mama fashion sense. She charged through her lurid wardrobe, plumbing new depths of tackiness with each outfit. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
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