Bermuda’s own Rebecca Faulkenberry dazzled the crowd at Fairmont Southampton Resort on Friday night and was well deserving of the standing ovation she received at the end of the show.

Her set for the Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts included a dizzying ten-minute medley of songs from the Rock of Ages musical she starred in and a variety of other Broadway hits, with some jazz and pop songs thrown into the mix.

The medley was quite a feat. She essentially wrapped up a two-hour-plus show into a highly entertaining ten-minute set that included numerous song snippets and even some comical narration between them. Her rendition of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ attracted a great reaction from the crowd.

While musicals are fun, the songs do lose a little clout without the grand costumes and sets that accompany them on Broadway. The most enjoyable parts of the show were the jazzier songs, which suited Faulkenberry’s often sultry voice.

She appeared relaxed on stage in front of an audience made up of many friends, family members and followers, including Premier Michael Dunkley. While she has excelled on the stage on Broadway, performing on home turf brings its own challenges and she did not falter through nerves.

One thing that stands out about Faulkenberry is the way she interacts with her audience. She makes an effort to tell you some history about each song, which adds depth to a show of this kind. She provided a fitting tribute to one of her musical icons, Whitney Houston, telling us that she found out the star had died just minutes before having to go on stage on Broadway.

“I was sobbing as my world came crashing down,” she recalled, but she managed to pull it off, be it with mascara rolling down her face. She followed with a version of How Will I Know?, which might not be the most adventurous Houston song but it was well executed all the same.

The band she brought with her from New York was highly versatile, able to perform the multitude of genres that the show demanded. The one exception was the reggae song Faulkenberry included in the set as a nod to her Island roots. It was a version of John Legend’s All of Me and was only mildly recognisable as reggae.

Faulkenberry treated us to an encore inspired by her boyfriend’s love of dance music, which led to a standing ovation and cheers of appreciation.

It’s not often we get to see a Broadway star grace the stage in Bermuda, never mind a local one. This was a real treat — but it is a shame there were not more performances as this was a sell-out.