Faith Prince: Broadway, Baby

"You can clap," Faith Prince wryly reassured the Barns at Wolf Trap audience, which greeted her opening lines of "Broadway Baby" with scattered applause Thursday night. "I mean, how many Broadway girls do you know from Virginia?"

The cabaret act by the Tony-winning Prince was like a low-key homecoming (she's from Lynchburg), familiar and chatty as she cracked wise about her showbiz career between numbers that tended toward the comic and sentimental. Patter about how she narrowly missed getting the lead in "Little Shop of Horrors" led to an enthusiastic rendition of the droll "Somewhere That's Green," followed by a rousing "Suddenly Seymour" with pianist Alex Rybeck completing the vocal duet.

Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" was a rare venture beyond the Broadway songbook, and Prince's measured reading was a fraction too moody. If the act had a flaw, it was the tendency to hold dramatic pauses and comic takes a beat too long, at least with this taciturn crowd. There was also a fumbled lyric or two, so that when Prince came around to the inevitable "Adelaide's Lament" from "Guys and Dolls" (reprising her 1992 Tony turn), she joked, "I hope I can remember it."

She did, and the rendition was sterling. Prince is a good singer -- cute squeaks, guttural growls and potent brass are her tools -- but she's flat-out great with character and lyrics. The Stephen Sondheim-Mary Rodgers "Girl From Ipanema" parody, "The Boy From . . . ," was a riot of loopy pronunciation. An Elaine Stritch anecdote (complete with a hilarious impersonation of the flinty diva) introduced Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch," performed with a nuanced boozy swagger.

A few lush, deeply felt Jerry Herman numbers from "Mame" and "Hello, Dolly!" wrapped up the 75-minute act, with a word from Prince that she's headed back to Broadway this spring in a musical version of "A Catered Affair." Hallelujah, baby.