Gerry Geddes

Gerry Geddes, critic for BistroAwards.com, is an award-winning director, writer, teacher, performer, lyricist, and a contributor to the podcast Troubadours and Raconteurs. He conceived and directed the acclaimed musical revues Monday in the Dark with George (Bistro and MAC Award winner), Put on Your Saturday Suit—Words & Music by Jimmy Webb, and Gerry Geddes & Company (in its five-year residency at Pangea). He has directed singers André De Shields, Darius de Haas, Helen Baldassare, and Lisa Viggiano. He has been active in the cabaret world for over five decades and has produced numerous CDs; his lyrics have been performed and recorded here and in Europe. Gerry’s workshop, The Art of Vocal Performance, is regularly offered to singers of all levels. His memoir of life in NYC, Didn’t I Ever Tell You This?, was recently published and is available at barnesandnoble.com. He is currently at work on his first novel.

The Kinsey Sicks

Gerry Geddes
Back in the day, the great Charles Ludlam formed the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and brought drag to a new and unique plateau—not using cross-dressing for just fun and camp, but to comment on theatre, on society, on gender expectations. If he had expanded into cabaret, he might well have come up with something like The...

Christopher Timson

Gerry Geddes
Sometimes, not often enough, the stars align and the gods of cabaret look down on a show and everything that can go right, miraculously, does and everything that can go wrong, even more miraculously, does not. That is what happened in Christoper Timson's show "#TBT: A Chubby Boy's Guide to Growing Up Normal" at Feinstein's/54...

The Quentin Tarantino Songbook

Gerry Geddes
It is a well-known fact that in addition to being an accomplished director, Quentin Tarantino is a lover of movies. His films are filled with homages and "quotes" from classic and pulp movies. Anyone who has seen his work also quickly realizes that he loves "old" music—often songs and themes from earlier films and generations....

Midnight at the Never Get

Gerry Geddes
Midnight at the Never Get, a new musical chronicling the tumultuous birth and rise of the Gay Liberation Movement through the relationship of two men whose lives intersect with this historic moment, is being given its inaugural workshop at Don't Tell Mama. The characters are fictional, but the play manages to pack a lot of historical...

Madame Mathieu’s Soirée

Gerry Geddes
Drew Fornarola is certainly not one to rest on his laurels. His play Straight (co-written with Scott Elmegreen) is enjoying a successful, critically acclaimed run. For others, this would be more than enough for a season, but Fornarola has fashioned another ongoing entertainment to delight New York audiences: Madame Mathieu's Soirée. Its premise is that...

Monday Night Madness

Gerry Geddes
One of the most sorely missed treasures of New York cabaret life in the last century was Eighty-Eight‘s, an understated yet elegant room on 10th Street in the West Village. I saw a lot of shows there. I reviewed a lot of shows there. I directed a lot of shows there. It was one of...

Kim Maresca

Gerry Geddes
Ruthless! The Musical, the satirical take on the classic killer-kid movie The Bad Seed, is currently enjoying a successful off-Broadway revival. One of its stars, Kim Maresca (who plays the harried and put-upon mother, Judy Denmark), went a few blocks uptown to Feinstein's/54 Below in a show that focused more on Broadway than off, and...

Steven Page

Gerry Geddes
Early on in his Café Carlyle debut, singer-songwriter Steven Page admits with sly understatement that he "was in a band for a long time." That band was the Toronto-based Barenaked Ladies, which toured (and is still touring) the world and sold millions of albums, and Page was its co-founder and lead singer and songwriter. Since...

Mabel Madness

Gerry Geddes
Mabel Madness – The Life of Mabel Mercer is a one-woman show written by and starring Trezana Beverley, the Tony-winning star of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. Mercer, one of the most influential vocalists in all of music and also one of the least known by the general public, pretty...

Rita Wilson

Gerry Geddes
The sixties ushered in a number of changes in the world of music: the British invasion, folk music, Motown, and many others.  One of those changes, the rise of the singer/songwriter, turned out to be a surprising double-edged sword. While it celebrated artists like Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jimmy Webb, James Taylor, Elton John and...