The defining distinction between a tribute concert and a cabaret honoring a legend is … what now? Having just subjected myself to the gut-churning but ultimately gratifying experience of Jeff Hamlin’s 16-hour cabaret intensive at the Studio Acting Conservatory, I’d argue it’s the personal touch: If it’s not clear by the end of the evening why the singer cared enough to put the program together, it’s more of the former. If you’ve gotten a sense of who the singer is — and who the honoree is to her — then you’ve got a proper cabaret.
By those lights, Nova Y. Payton’s boisterous, buoyant salute to Aretha Franklin in Signature Theatre’s intimate ARK space lands somewhere in the middle. There’s a bit of chat about Aretha’s place in the pantheon, and perhaps a touch more background on Payton, one of Signature’s brighter home-grown stars, who came up in DC’s Petworth neighborhood and toured internationally with superstars including Roberta Flack before making a name of her own in musical theater. But the tight 75-minute format of Signature’s summer cabaret series doesn’t leave a ton of time for patter — even if Payton does live up to her top-of-show threat to run a little longer than her contract calls for.
So while Payton’s Respect: Aretha Franklin, playing through August 30, doesn’t shed a ton of new light on either of the ladies whose prowess it celebrates, it certainly serves up a healthy helping of tunes the Tennessee-born, Detroit-rooted diva either created or recreated into something entirely her own.
The title tune, of course, features prominently, reshaped (bold move) by Payton and her excellent four-piece band to swing a little more loosely than it does in Aretha’s canonical reading. That comes later in the evening, though, once both singer and players have demonstrated their chops with more traditional takes on tunes like “Chain of Fools” (complete with crowd work that had the aunties surrounding my corner table singing and swaying righteously along) and of course monster hits like “Think” (which Payton compares to a pre-hiphop exercise in rap-style rapid-fire lyricism). Then, of course, there’s “Natural Woman.”
Payton seizes the opportunity of that particular smash to summon the purse-carrying, train-trailing, fur-dropping memory of Franklin’s legendarily grand Kennedy Center Honors performance in tribute to songwriter Carole King. King, of course, made no bones about whose song “Natural Woman” came to be: She might have written the anthem, but it was Aretha who transformed it; what was once a tune about a defeated woman revitalized by a man’s love became forever the triumphant declaration of an indomitable creature who might once have needed a pick-me-up, but has long since claimed her place — and proclaimed the fullness and sufficiency of her own spectacular self.
On the more introspective front, Payton drifts raptly through the euphoria-tinged fresh-love ruminations of “Daydreaming” and deploys the slow sorrows of “Today I Sing the Blues” as a reminder that even the Queen of Soul might have had her bad days. And to celebrate Franklin’s civil rights activism, she offers up a stirring take on “A Change Is Gonna Come,” paired with a “Bridge Over Troubled Water” that makes for a sobering reminder of how sturdy the shoulders of this nation’s Black women have had to be — on behalf of us all.
A note for anyone looking for Aretha imitations: This evening isn’t that. Payton doesn’t sound all that much like her subject; her bright, silvery tone is its own thing, and she’s not trying to summon the bronze notes of Franklin’s rounder, huskier instrument. Nor does she bring vocal backup, as Franklin most always did; that’s for the audience to supply. But fear not: Payton does bring to the table the vocal agility — and the pure soul — to do Franklin’s catalog plenty of justice.
If the evening starts a little quietly — with “I Say a Little Prayer,” a relatively relaxed groove by Franklin’s standards — Payton ratchets the dials up soon enough, and by the time she’s made her way to “Rock Steady” (satisfyingly funky, maybe even a little sweaty), she’s broken out both some enticing hip action and a portable fan. But then cabaret can be warm work, and by the midpoint of the performance I saw, Payton’s lavish false eyelashes had had to be sacrificed for the hard-working singer’s comfort and sanity.
The singer’s closing gambit — a spin through the disposable ’80s bubblegum hit “Freeway of Love” designed to get the audience up and moving once again — succeeded alike with both the aunties and my own distinctly Caucasity-afflicted table, where few of us were able to demonstrate credible moves but at least one of us knew all the lyrics despite the song’s essential cringe factor. (It was me, child of the Reagan Era that I am.) Happily, “Freeway” wasn’t the last we heard from Franklin or Payton, who returned to the stage to pay one last tribute to Lonell Johnson’s superbly laconic quartet — and to offer a welcome lagniappe in the form of a grateful “You’re All I Need to Get By.”
Running Time: Approximately 75 minutes, no intermission.
Respect: Aretha Franklin plays through August 30, 2026, in the ARK Theatre at Signature Theatre, 4200 Campbell Ave, Arlington, VA. Tickets (from $61) are available online, by calling the box office at 703.820.9771, or through TodayTix.
