Ally McBeal - don't you just loathe it? All that glutinous, gawky sentimentality, the dribbly "it's hard to be a woman" stuff, its eye-wearying parade of unremittingly ravishing twenty-somethings; self-obsessed Snow Whites marinating in their own neuroses. No? Perhaps I`m the only one then . . .
Those of us immune to the top-rating quasi-sitcom's treacly allure were not ideally placed to appreciate the earnestness dispensed on Wednesday night by Ally McBeal in-house chanteuse, Vonda Shepard - the all American singer/songwriter with the apple-pie grin, whose feel-good ballads drip irony-free observations about love and loss like strawberry slush.
It's impossible to divorce Shepard's grandiose anthems from the vehicle which has introduced them to a wider audience. She peppers her between-song banter with awe-filled references to "the show"; the ghost of Ally stalks the aisles, as palpable as the curls of dry ice oozing from the recesses of the stage.
Shepard belts out Searching My Soul - Ally McBeal's omnipresent torchsong - with adequate gusto; leaps into a blubbery cover of The Beatles' World Without Love ("this number features in the show's second season - I guess you guys haven't seen it yet," she meanders to feisty cheers from the stalls) and nearly pulls off a frothy version of Cher's Shoop Shoop Song. The audience laps it up.
To the uninitiated, it's wearying stuff, but then Vonda Shepard would hardly claim to be to everyone's taste.
Mick Hanley, who plays at the Civic Theatre in Tallaght at 8 p.m. tonight