Dorian Woodruff is an elegant and refined man. And, with a voice that is just as elegant and refined, he captivated the audience at Pangea with his show Welcome Home: Everybody Has a Story. The MAC Award nominee crafted a lovely program of stories and songs that almost always intertwined seamlessly, sung with a formidable […]
In her recent show at Pangea, Deb Berman took what could have been straight-ahead cabaret fare—American Songbook standards and personal stories—and made every moment land with authenticity and finesse. Opening with “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing)” (Duke Ellington, Irving Mills) and closing with “Things Are Swinging’” (Jack Marshall, Peggy […]
There is a kid-like exuberance about Mischa Kischkum that quickly spreads through the audience. In his debut solo cabaret show, Off the Charts: Songs You Don’t Know By Writers You Love (directed by Jason Ellis), the performer comes to the stage and quickly commands it, wearing (among other things) a sly smile and a leopard-print […]
Singer-actress Aisha de Haas entitled her new show at Birdland The Music That Makes Me Dance, but it might have been more accurately titled The Music That Makes Me SING. Claiming to have been liberated from restrictive impressions of what cabaret should be by attending a recent Natalie Douglas show, she had filled this “hodgepodge” with […]
You would think that by now there couldn’t possibly be a new way to present an all-Sondheim cabaret show. But, as Daryl Glenn proved in this recent Don’t Tell Mama outing (directed by Vince DeGeorge), you’d be wrong about that. From the moment Glenn bounded onstage in a colorful paisley tailcoat and launched into his […]
Like most comics who came of age in the middle of the last century, Lenny Bruce started out on a fairly conventional path. After coming home from the World War II Army, he took a job as emcee at the club where his entertainer mother, Sally Marr, was working. “Stealing material from my mother,” as […]
In her new show at Don’t Tell Mama, She Bangs, She Bangs: Marriage, Adultery, Texas & Jesus, actress-singer Jennifer Bangs delivers one of the most soul-baring cabaret programs I have ever seen. The show (directed by Tanya Moberly) is a true confession, told in excruciating detail. Bangs relates the story of her broken marriage along […]
In her new show, I Can’t Trace Time, directed by Dan Ruth and currently at The Green Room 42, Andrea Wolff stays true to her title premise by not offering a chronological autobiography, but, instead, presenting moments in, and aspects of, her life—and her thoughts about them—in no particular sequence. Employing an eclectic, effective array […]
The Jazz Bastards are a hot mess. Or so they’d like you to think. If they’re anyone’s illegitimate children, it’s not just jazz’s—Les Paul is one possible father figure, as are any of the deadpan comedians from Buster Keaton on down to John Belushi, and perhaps Elvis Costello and Tom Waits are great-uncles. Their two […]
More than once in This Is a Changing World, My Dear, her recent show at Don’t Tell Mama, Cynthia Crane referred to herself as a “walking obsolescence.” But, in fact, she and her show seemed quite timely. It took a wry look at cultural developments—some viewed as positive, but many not—that have left people of […]
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