Judith Owen at Django

September 28, 2025

“This is about sex and filth and good music,” Judith Owen declared, early in the first set of the evening at Django.

We were warned.

This was the second time I’d seen Owen play at this club, the first being in February of this year. I didn’t write about her back then. I wasn’t sure I’d grasped fully who she is as a vocalist and as a performer. I sensed, though, that a flamboyant, sometimes ostentatious aspect is a big part of the Judith Owen package.  

The London-born singer (who grew up in Wales) came to the stage bringing plenty of Jagger-ish swagger. Her opening song was “For You My Love” (Paul Gayten). Through it and the next two numbers (Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg’s “Down with Love” and Percy Mayfield’s “Lost Mind”), there was an aggressive restlessness about her, as if she were maybe impatient to get to the juicier parts—the down-est and dirtiest parts.

In fact, in this set Owen “worked blue” less than what I recall from the February show, and I sort of missed the vintage smutty songs of yesteryear. Not that she was exactly demure.

Wearing an insouciantly tilted man’s hat atop her cascading Rita Hayworth–like tresses, along with a black suit with sparkles, she moved frenetically around the stage, her head bobbing to the music, her gestures big. Occasionally, she would thrust a leg toward the sky, as if trying to kick the moon in the butt. She writhed and jived. She grimaced. Sometimes she appeared to be directing traffic at a dangerous intersection, wiggling her fingers when she sought louder applause for a band member’s solo. She played up the androgyny suggested by her wardrobe, in the tradition of such performers as Marlene Dietrich and Mick Jagger himself.

I noticed that she tended to avoid sustained eye contact with her audience. At times it seemed she was displaying herself rather than making a bid to connect and commune with her listeners. At some points during the show, she closed her eyes for long stretches. 

All of the showy stuff distracted me from the music, and, at some point, I closed my own eyes, just to concentrate on what she was doing vocally. And…she seemed just fine. 

Then, things shifted.

A creeping-paced and sultry “Fever” (Eddie Dooley, John Davenport) made for a welcome respite from the rambunctiousness at the top of show. Near the end of this song, she harmonized playfully (and endearingly) with Kevin Louis, the show’s cornetist/flugelhornist. 

Her musicality became even better spotlighted as the set progressed. After a gorgeous, gospel-tinged “Please Send Me Someone to Love” (Mayfield again), she took pianist David Torkanowsky’s place at the keys, singing an exquisite bossa nova version of Frank Loesser’s “If I Were a Bell,” and seemed to be a completely different singer from the one she’d been previously. The audience response was especially favorable for this number. Maybe, in part, because she was now singing to us rather than at us. And she was, more or less, sitting still.

A six-piece orchestra (Owen’s “gentlemen callers”) gave her all the backup energy she could have asked for this evening. A special nod to sax player Ricardo Pascal, who had some especially impressive solo turns.

I liked Judith Owen better this time around, mostly because I relaxed and realized that, although she can sing jazz and blues and gospel and Frank Loesser effectively, she seems, principally, to have a rock singer’s sensibility. And so be it.

At one point during this set, she said something about jazz and blues being elements of the rock pedigree. That was a good reminder: Musical genres can blend and they can tangle. I don’t imagine Judith Owen worries too much about how what she sings is classified. But she certainly cares about it being good music. 

Paired, of course, with good sex and good filth. (Maybe a little more of that, next time?)

###

Presented at Django, 2 6th Avenue, NYC, Sept. 17 &18, 2025.

About the Author

Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing reviews for BistroAwards.com in 2011. More recently he has contributed "Cabaret Setlist" articles about cabaret repertoire. Other reviews and articles have appeared in theaterscene.net and clydefitchreport.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.