In her ravishing show Carried Away at Don’t Tell Mama, Amy Beth Williams proved to be a superb singer, a subtle actress, and a compelling interpreter of lyrics. Beautifully directed by Tanya Moberly, this 65-minute set displayed Williams as an artist painting on a broad but seamless canvas. While the show’s ostensible theme was war […]
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, the album Nilsson Schmilsson by Harry Nilsson, and memories of time spent at a boys’ camp in New Hampshire combine in the kaleidoscopic dreamscape called Welcome to the Jungle, currently on display at Pangea. This is the latest in a series called The Living Record Collection written and performed […]
At the top of Oh Broadway, My Broadway, his new show at the Metropolitan Room, Ron Dabney promised that he was going to give us new takes on songs from the Great White Way. To be honest, the songs were not exclusively Broadway and the arrangements did not stray all that far from the traditional. […]
What fun it was to start off Tony Awards weekend at the Laurie Beechman Theatre with Broadway By The Letter, an hour of musical-theatre songs from the vocal ensemble Marquee Five (Mick Bleyer, Lynsey Buckelew, Adam West Hemming, Vanessa Parvin, and Sierra Rein). Musical director Hemming wrote the lush and intricate arrangements that the group […]
At the Metropolitan Room, Lisa Yaeger’s new show, Jersey Girl, is not only a tribute to her place of birth and current residence, but also a celebration of the musical legends that the state has given the world. It’s a simple but effective premise, offering the singer a great variety of musical styles and genres […]
The title of Lane Bradbury’s Don’t Tell Mama show, Let Me Entertain You Again, suggests that the singer-dancer-actor will be dealing largely with her participation in Broadway’s legendary 1959 premiere of the musical Gypsy. That proves to be the case, and for good reason. Bradbury was a girl of 16 when she took on the […]
Sitting in the audience at the Metropolitan Room, viewing Katie McGrath’s extraordinary new show, Significant Others, I was reminded of a friend’s description of good musical theatre: the songs occur when mere speech is not enough to communicate the feelings and emotion of the character. McGrath presented herself as a smart, strong, witty, composed woman, […]
Chris Harder wears many hats, most of which he will happily remove with the rest of his clothes in his role as burlesque performer/producer and porn star. He is also a writer, and he has created a series of wild and wacky take-offs of The Hardy Boys at the Laurie Beechman Theatre called Nasty Drew […]
Creating a cabaret tribute show can start with a performer’s simple, perhaps youthful, admiration for the chosen subject. Internet searches may provide at least the bare bones of a biographical narrative. Memorizing the key numbers in an honoree’s song list is a must, of course. But there is so much more that’s needed beyond a […]
“I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues,” Carol Shedlin declares emphatically in the opening number of her current Don’t Tell Mama show, Serenade in Blue (directed by Linda Amiel Burns). While there are, of course, no legal restrictions on blues singing, there’s long been disagreement about who has and who lacks the credentials to do […]
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