Naomi Hart’s ‘Hart to Heart: Tales from the Big Apple’ was a fine cabaret show that played the innovative, intimate El Rocco nightclub at Bar Me in Sydney’s King Cross.

Naomi, together with her piano player, and musical director, Paul Geddes, kept a warm, enthusiastic audience entertained with her mixture of powerful songs and colourful anecdotes. The show was bound together by her effusive, confident stage presence, a strong singing voice that held the difficult notes well, and a clear narrative line.

The show’s rich canvas was taken from her recent three years trying to make it big in New York City. ‘Hart to Heart’ was like her final letter home except that she was at the El Rocco Bar delivering it herself with panache.

I enjoyed Naomi’s comic ‘spins’ on some of her more interesting New York stage roles such as Velma Kelly in ‘Chicago’, and Sister Bertha in ‘The Sound of Music’.

It was artful the way she made songs out of some of her more challenging experiences. One of the stand-out numbers was a wonderful song she wrote about her time living in a huge apartment block in New York where the party never stopped. The action was going 24 hours, being produced by people from all different cultures, and she described the resulting chaos vividly.

There was the plaintiveness of the facts of life song ‘Temporary’ that she composed for, if I recall rightly, her niece, dealing with the loss of her grandfather.

The anecdotes kept on coming, in her rapid delivery style, showing a keenly observant mind that especially delighted in the wide range of characters she came across in her travels.

There was the yang as well as the yin in ‘Hart to Heart’. Naomi gave the audience a taste of her struggle to make ends meet. The long hours spent waitressing… The many days she spent just living on tuna with her favourite meal, Tuna Surprise. In a neat riposte at the end of the show Naomi handed out small cans of tuna to takers in the audience as they were leaving.

My favourite moment was her closing anecdote to the show. She was talking about her life since arriving back in Sydney. People were still trying to change her. Some in her family want her to reconsider her career again, in the direction of being a Doctor like she dreamed of when she was a teenager. Recently she was invited to a wedding and, because she is single, someone attempted to matchmake her with, of all things, a 45 year old farmer!

Naomi told the audience that she was now too sure of herself to give in to these pressures. She then went on to sing one of her own songs, celebrating her own independent life path, in which she sang about defying gravity, and never allowing herself to feel put down again. It was a stirring end to a fine show