“a voice your family could summer in”
“Farah Alvin has an absolutely perfect American musical theater voice”
“vulnerable, charismatic and funny. And boy can that woman sing!”
Someday
Farah Alvin's Solo Album
"... Someday is full of lots and lots of everything I like in pop music: good tunes, smart lyrics, gorgeous singing, spare and striking arrangements. I especially like "Tragedienne," a song about two women whose friendship is on the rocks...
...If you've enjoyed the music of Erin McKeown, Jonatha Brooke, Allison Moorer, Luciana Souza, Dave's True Story, the Lascivious Biddies, or any of the other slightly off-center singer-songwriters and pop groups championed in the past by the like-minded proprietors of this blog, my guess is that Farah Alvin will suit you right down to the ground. Check her out."
- TERRY TEACHOUT - ABOUT LAST NIGHT ARTS BLOG (9/19/05)
[title of show]
Theaterworks, Silicon Valley
"...the vocally gifted Farah Alvin as Heidi (it's rare to hear a young voice so beautifully placed, supported, and focused with laser-like precision)."
- George Heymont, The Huffington Post (6/11)
Funny Girl
Gretna Theatre
"Farah Alvin will put any thoughts of Ms. Streisand to rest. Her Fanny Brice is vulnerable, charismatic and funny. And boy can that woman sing!
She makes Fanny totally her own. This is not, in any way, an imitation of Streisand. She's got her own style, her own comic methods and a voice that soars.
When she sings "People" it belongs to her. And she gives Fanny a sweet vulnerability that makes you like and understand her.
This is a big, belt 'em out performance, but Alvin knows how to keep it intimate. That's what makes her Fanny so great."
- Jane Holohan, Intelligencer Journal (7/11)
New Theater (KS)
"New Theatre Restaurant’s production makes one say, 'Barbara, who?'
As Brice, the vaudeville superstar, Alvin is a lot funnier than Streisand was in the 1968 film, which I watched again recently on television to confirm the thoughts I had as I laughed at Alvin's tender-but-comedic take on Brice, a woman who masked her insecurities with self-deprecating humor.
This may be blasphemy for Babs fans, but I preferred the approach Alvin took to “People.” She sang it very un-Streisand-like, again making it much more a song to which everyday folk could relate."
- Topeka Capital Journal
"…despite an outsize presence and a voice your family could summer in. We're told she's funny-looking, but Alvin is a knockout, a thoroughly winning performer who, in her first number alone, kills at fast-talk patter and big, Broadway belting. Minutes later, she manages to telegraph both Brice's deep insecurity and supreme confidence, all while flailing around on roller skates."
- The Pitch
"Farah Alvin plays Fanny with a restrained comic touch that establishes a vital distance from the role’s famous originator.
Alvin’s voice is warm and sinuous in the show’s tender ballads but is likewise capable of a mighty belt."
- Kansas City Star
Marvelous Wonderettes
Original Off-Broadway Production
"Nutrition… is delivered exclusively by Farah Alvin…
Her diplomatic but neurotic struggles to keep everything together …melts away when she launches into Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster’s 'Secret Love.' Slicing through an ocean of adolescent soup, Missy unleashes 18 years of loneliness and longing with a violently vibrating belt that belies her carefully cultivated wallflower persona.
Missy doesn’t just sing the song, she lives it; and Alvin finds in her rendition such tender but unapologetic force, you come to understand just how someone who seemed a perpetual girl is truly a woman after all. And when she elucidates her crush further, to the strains of The Bobbettes’ 'Mr. Lee,' it’s with more free-spirited, confident fizz than a street full of soda fountains.”
— Matthew Murray, Talkin’ Broadway
"And while each woman’s voice is impressive, Alvin’s especially has recording- star quality. When she hits the power notes in 'Secret Love' or wails with desperation in 'Wedding Bell Blues', her voice slices through its gimmicky surroundings. Patrons who tire of nostalgia can just close their eyes and listen.”
— Mark Blankenship, Variety
"…The performers are game, especially the lovably nerdy Farah Alvin, who has a tremendous voice…"
— Raven Snook, Time Out New York
Edges
Capital Rep
"Colin Hanlon inhabits a song as much as he sings it and he has the unique ability to make you believe every number was written expressly for him. Farah Alvin has the same skill. She internalizes a song and expands its parameters with a good voice and a great ear for lyric sensibility."
- Bob Goepfert, Albany Record
"Singers Farah Alvin, Steven Booth, Whitney Bashor and Colin Hanlon are invested in the material and act their parts...to the teeth.
Some of these songs are worthy of Jason Robert Brown or Adam Guettel, and "Lying There" as voiced...by Farah Alvin, even hints at Stephen Sondheim. No Really."
- Michael Eck, Albany Times Union
Pirates!
Papermill Playhouse
"Farah Alvin, one of New York's very best musical-comedy singers, whose voice, as always, is brilliant and true..."
- Wall Street Journal
"Mabel, played wisely and radiantly by the vivacious Farah Alvin, lights up the stage at each entrance."
- New York Times
"Farah Alvin is delicious in the part, strong but not strident...Add to this a glorious soprano on “Poor Wand’ring One” -- and you have a charming performance..."
- New Jersey Star-Ledger
"The young lovers are played with delicious comic allure by Farah Alvin and Barrett Foa."
- Variety
"Farah Alvin is a Mabel with backbone, charisma and a gorgeous voice."
- Talkin’ Broadway
Goodspeed Opera House
"Farah Alvin’s Mabel is far from the cupie-doll tradition, looking like she bolted from a production of feminist comedy 'On the Verge.' She even gets to be a bit wacky. (Watch how the performer's eyes twitch when her ideas are summarily dismissed by her oblivious dad.)"
- Frank Rizzo, Variety
"The charming Ms. Alvin is the other cast standout, giving brainy sisters a very good name."
- The New York Times
I Love You Because
Original Off Broadway Production
"...Farah Alvin, the best young musical-comedy singer to come along in years... of whom much more will be heard."
- Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal
"A powerful voice..."
- William Stevenson, Broadway.com
"Hanlon and Alvin are especially impressive, with rich, emotional singing voices that match their acting chops."
- Variety
"But Alvin impresses most as the flighty Marcy, making her a giddily gushing embodiment of everything unexpectedly delightful about New York. With her intensely focused acting and her convicted singing, Alvin makes you intimately understand why Austin finds Marcy so fascinating and frustrating, and beautifully reconciles the flibbertigibbet personality that can sing the tentative “Just Not Now” so plaintively one moment and the comically confessional 'Even Though' not long after.
… Alvin, whether holding back or letting loose with her unrestrained comic fury, is the true find of this show, so sweet one minute and so sour the next, it's sometimes hard to remember one actress does it all."
- Matthew Murray, Broadway Stars
If You Give A Mouse a Cookie...
Original Off-Broadway Production
"The six-person cast - Farah Alvin, David A. Austin, Nick Blaemire, Stephanie D'Abruzzo, Aurelia Williams and Carla Woods - is uniformly excellent. These are real pros who, at a recent performance, made the adults in the audience laugh just as much as the children."
- Anita Gates, The New York Times
"Farah Alvin wins the kids over before she even talks; her body language -- crouched over the table with the friendliest of smiles, with her striped-stockinged knees a-knocking -- gets the first vignette off to a strong start. She continues warm and friendly in all her roles."
- Steven Suskin, National Variety
"i love your singing and i love all the parts of imogene's antlers. i love every part of the play. and i love listening to your music on the computer. i want to buy it. i love your hair. i wish i was you."
- Carla Martin, Age 4
Concerts & Cabarets
BROADWAY’S LEADING LADIES
"…Farah Alvin has an absolutely perfect American musical theater voice. Her reading of Can't Help Lovin' That Man is the very definition of the term 'show-stopper'."
- Fort Worth Star Telegram (Fort Worth Symphony, TX)
