As a popular-song composer, Burt Bacharach (1928-2023) is unique. It’s not that he alone among many peers is grounded in classical composition. Yes, he did study with Darius Milhaud and was known to cite George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers as important predecessors along those lines. But that’s not what distinguishes him. It’s something else entirely.
What sets Bacharach apart is that his songs—most of the best-known written with lyricist Hal David, and what a reliably brilliant team they were—are marked by a melodic groove, a lilt that almost always says on first hearing, “Burt Bacharach, of course, who else could it be?”
To celebrate that swoony-commercially-commercially swoony achievement, a gang of Bacharach advocates have created and produced Going Bacharach: The Songs of an Icon. Conceived by Jack Lewin (remember his successful three-person valentine Our Sinatra?), they include such stalwarts as Will Friedwald and Tedd Firth.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
With such progenitors, the enterprise’s very announcement excites expectations. Are they met? The answer is a perplexing two-act revue not often enough rewarding to start tossing laurels at.
What’s gone wrong that’s resulted in a standard Las Vegas lounge staple, something to kill time by while waiting for the main attraction in Caesar’s Palace main auditorium? Not that the above-mentioned don’t know the ins and outs of Bacharach’s tools. They do. In act two Hilary Kole—who with John Pagano and Ta-Tynisa Wilson are the three singers on tap—explains that Bacharach was unusually playful with time signatures. She focuses on the title melody for Promises, Promises, his only original Broadway score. (The Look of Love was a retrospective revue, wrongly underrated when it opened in 2003.)
Kole points out that in the first 7 “Promises, Promises” bars, Bacharach changes signature five times, including two 7/8 measures. How clever is he in this musical ability to suggest the agitation of someone complaining about someone who promises plenty but come across with little.
Oh, yes, these Going Bacharach purveyors seem to know what they’re about but, sad to report, don’t follow through. Instead, they raise the question: Are they honoring Bacharach—and, it should be needless to say, David—or are they using the purported honoree(s) as vehicles for three performers to strut their impressive vocal talents.
Kole, Wilson and Pagano (who toured with Bacharach for 26 notable years) boast stop-traffic voices. And boast is the correct verb, for relentlessly parading those pipes the trio do. Just about everything they tackle (only four with lyrics not David’s), is aimed across the footlights in deference to these post-American Idol melisma-heavy days. So many of even the one syllable lyrics they intone are bent into three or four or eight notes for which the only explanation is drawing attention to the singer not the song.
Obviously then, whether the three ever think to act a song is debatable. Yet, so many of David’s lyrics might have benefitted from proficient singer-actors. Take something like the angry “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” Or consider the title song from 1963’s hit “Alfie” film, for which Bacharach and David took special care to encapsulate the Michael Caine character’s careless attitude. David even cannily includes the common Britishism “when you sort it out.” The result being one of the craftiest song monologs in show-biz annals has Kole giving it a try but only so far. In the lyric David fits 10 mentions of the name Alfie, surely prompting an actor to find more than one way to underline the argument for love. Kole uses the final Alfie strictly as another opportunity to sustain one more high note.
Giving credit where it’s only occasionally due: during the second act, Kole. Wilson, and Pagano let go three outcries—in chronological order, “Don’t Make Me Over,” “One Less Bell to Answer,” and “God, Give Me Strength” (Elvis Costello’s words). Through that sequence they all breath-takingly catch the spirit of desperation.
Bear in mind that the singers aren’t alone in missing (ignoring?) the inherent Bacharach possibilities. Adrian Galante is the revue’s musical director and present at the piano when not standing up to administer silvery clarinet on a Christopher and Justin set apparently meant to conjure something like the Hollywood Bowl.
Galante, who contributed the not entirely satisfying arrangements and orchestrations, fronts a band featuring keyboardist Patrick Firth, guitarist Derek Duleba, bassist Nate Francis, and drummer Jakubu Griffin, all of whom, from the get-go, sound fuzzier than preferable. (This could be the fault of sound designer Matt Berman, or is it the room’s acoustics?} The impression is that Galante is saluting the high-decibel loudness audiences are now presumed to demand.
Directing the off-kilter caboodle is superb lyricist David Zippel, who on this (first?) directorial outing is less than superb. As someone who might be imagined wanting lyrics acted as often as possible, he instead prefers exaggerating singers’ professional clichés. He adamantly doesn’t eliminate the fave one where a last note is sustained as a singer raises an arm in vocal triumph. On the last number of so many famous Bacharach songs reprised, all three simultaneously do the sustained-note-arm-raise.
In sum, the Going Bacharach title looks intended to spin as Going Back-arach. Here, though, it seems to be emphasizing Going Bach-a-wreck.
Going Bacharach opened January 12, 2026, at Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater and runs through February 15. Tickets and information: goingbacharach.com
