Road trip Rachael Warren’s chameleonic Songs BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience Conceived by Rachael Warren and Amanda Dehnert. Directed by Amanda Dehnert. With Rachel Warren, Drew Battles, Justin Blanchard, and Miriam Silverman. At Trinity Repertory Company through January 25.

There are a lot of stories packed into a lot of the songs that we hear. After a successful practice cabaret run in February, Trinity Repertory Company is turning again to that bare-bones form of musical theater. Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience may not be as bleak as William Blake, who provided the title, but any trivial ditty among the more than four dozen songs doesn’t get a chance to take over, as many of the tuneful narratives selected for the evening keep bringing things back to solid ground.

An American road trip songbook is the offering, as company member Rachael Warren again regales with her quicksilver voice and actor’s presence. Backed by a mini-troupe of three musicians, including co-creator Amanda Dehnert on piano and vocals, Warren slips on a black leather jacket and cocky attitude one moment, an air of saucy innocence the next, as she steps into various song worlds, quick as a chameleon.

From the gritty observations of Ani DiFranco and Tom Waits to the affirmations of Stevie Wonder and Lennon/McCartney, the road is wide and well-traveled. This is no Up With People grin fest. The dominant mood is shaded, though the spirit of the opportunity doesn’t allow things to remain dark too long. At times that tendency to brighten the mood is like a raconteur in his cups, who hears himself getting maudlin and snaps back into jollity.

For example, Lyle Lovett’s charming freedom song "If I Had a Boat" drops the fantasy of Tonto purring "kiss my ass" to the Lone Ranger. For different tone-tinkering, Van Morrison’s "Brown Eyed Girl" skips the sex in the grass behind the stadium — though this show by no means coyly averts its gaze on our behalf. In fact, when Warren takes on the black-jacket slouch of one of the five characters she alternately channels, she and Miriam Silverman kiss pretty convincingly in the James Taylor Bad Boy paean "I Was Only Telling a Lie." (That self-impressed persona provides the hilarity of the evening, cruising audience members and dispensing pick-up banter and phone-number-inscribed slips of paper.)

Actor-singers Silverman and Drew Battles get to sing and strut more than in the earlier Trinity cabaret, and they are joined by Justin Blanchard. The latter two double on bass and guitar, respectively. Besides pianist Dehnert, the other musicians are Mike Sartini on percussion and Kevin Fallon on various strings — his banjo picking in "Seven Bridges Road" is perfect for the mood and setting of the song.

The three backup members get to be a chorus in the Greek as well as musical sense, advancing the action as well as the tunes. At one point, Battles is very funny as a prom date shaking a corsage nearly apart as he opens its box, soon flashing a smile a beat after a camera snaps. Silverman is in good voice and sassy form as she sings and shimmies for the "mama said" chorus in "You Can’t Hurry Love," and Blanchard does good by "Georgia On My Mind."

Dehnert helmed this, as she did the last time out, and some of the settings and opportunities need as imaginative a director as she is. She and Warren are co-billed as creators, so there’s no telling where some of the touches came from, as when Randy Newman’s ruminative "In Germany Before the War" becomes a tale from a man who grabs the arm of a coffee-pouring waitress to tell his story. Dehnert’s hand is more evident in the apt sequencing and the ebb and flow of transitions. For example, after that last slow, balladic song we leap with no transition into the up-tempo "Deep In the Heart of Texas," very briefly, before we settle into the medium tempo of "(Please, Please, Please) Let Me Get What I Want." Such unlikely or abrupt segues tend to work well in guiding the tone and emotional arc of this musical grab bag.

The set design by David Jenkins has a long stage-left marquee listing names of the songwriters as well as the performers. The red neon Pegasus of the old Mobil sign is above the platform stage, and nearby audience members sit at tables or at long front-row counters.

Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience is far more ambitious and correspondingly more accomplished than last spring’s Rachael Warren: 20 songs . . . 20 lives . . . The songs have more staying power, building up after intermission to several Tom Waits vignettes of the down-and-dirty, as well as more familiar social realism story-songs such as John Prine’s "Angel From Montgomery."

Last April’s cabaret was enjoyable entertainment, like you might find in many a nightclub. This performance is that and more. It takes a theatrical sensibility to reach into these songs for the dramas there, and requires the talent that’s at work here to pull off these quick Hchanges successfully.