The title of Lillias White’s latest cabaret act is “Make Someone Happy.” It’s predicated on the thought that “the whole world, not just the United States” is a shit-show, and, given the circumstances, it’s better to craft a show that makes the audience feel better when they leave, than when they came in. That’s why she belts numbers like the title song, “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive,” and Nat “King” Cole’s “That’s All,” bringing them to fiery life.

The show, the advance press says, “features standards for the world of Broadway, film, and jazz.” It might well have also mentioned blues; plus, White addresses it all with that particular sort of expressiveness and virtuosity that is native to soul and jazz. White has one of those thunderclap voices, like Darlene Love or Martha Wash, that electrifies and illuminates everything it touches. The Brooklyn native made her Broadway debut in Barnum in 1981. She played Effie in the 1987 revival of Dreamgirls – really a Broadway return of the original production’s tour – a show she describes as life-changing, and she does a towering rendition of that show’s “I Am Changing.”

For her role as Sonja in Cy Coleman’s The Life, she won the Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and she gives that show’s “(Getting Too Old for) The Oldest Profession” a riotous go. She excuses the number’s raunchiness by warning that “I take no responsibility for what Sonja says to you while I’m out!” Always a great artist, always a warm presence. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.