Mark Dundas Wood

Mark Dundas Wood is an arts/entertainment journalist and dramaturg. He began writing for BistroAwards.com in 2011. Currently, he writes the "Bistro Bits" column for the site. Other reviews and articles have appeared at theaterscene.net and talkinbroadway.com, as well as in American Theatre and Back Stage. As a dramaturg, he has worked with New Professional Theatre and the New York Musical Theatre Festival. He is currently literary manager for Broad Horizons Theatre Company.

Orfeh and Andy Karl

Mark Dundas Wood
The husband-and-wife team of Orfeh and Andy Karl have teamed up for Legally Bound (directed by Charles Randolph-Wright), in an engagement at Feinstein's/54 Below. Married now for 17 years, the two have made names for themselves in musical theatre and have occasionally appeared together in New York productions, most notably in Broadway's Legally Blonde (2007)....

Roseanna Vitro Project

Mark Dundas Wood
The "project" in the title of this show refers to jazz singer and music teacher Roseanna Vitro's efforts to generate smart and graceful lyrics for the late Charlie Parker's bebop compositions. Sing a Song of Bird: The Music of Charlie Parker—staged as a one-nighter at Jazz at Kitano—is clearly a work in progress. Some songs...

Norm Lewis

Mark Dundas Wood
For the third year in a row, theatre, film, and TV actor-singer Norm Lewis is performing a holiday-oriented program at Feinstein's/54 Below. The opening night of this year's offering, Santa Baby!, appears to have brought out a group of his most ardent, demonstrative fans. There's plenty to like in Lewis the cabaret performer—starting, of course,...

Dean Benner

Mark Dundas Wood
Here's a nice fantasy: the pop musical style known as "western swing" re-emerges as a major phenomenon and somehow brings together opposing camps in American culture: red states and blue, rust belt and borscht. OK, it's a long shot. I suppose there are some people who don't care for this hybrid of western music and...

Diane Schuur

Mark Dundas Wood
Early during the second show of her opening night at Birdland, singer-pianist Diane Schuur noted that second sets are good because you never know exactly what's going to happen with them. Certainly, she was in an anything-goes frame of mind. Playing to an appreciative 11pm crowd, she struck a highly informal tone, letting her instincts,...

Bazazz! A Sequined Variety

Mark Dundas Wood
I'm glad to have lived through the 1960s and 1970s, when prime time TV variety shows—inspired by British music hall and American vaudeville entertainments—were most in vogue. And I'm sorry kids today miss out on such programs. (Fortunately, they can catch segments from many of the vintage ones on YouTube). The case can be made...

Amy Wolk

Mark Dundas Wood
The first music we hear in Amy Wolk's new Duplex show is a snippet of the "Love Is All Around" theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The singer arrives on the stage, kicking out one leg so that we can get a good look at one of her bright new Wonder Woman shoes. Then...

Leslie Carrara-Rudolph

Mark Dundas Wood
I'll never forget the day my brother and I were spurned by Wunda Wunda. The TV story lady of the Pacific Northwest was a tall, stately yet somehow dainty clown character. I was 8 and Brian was 6 when we had our encounter with Wunda at the Seattle World's Fair. While she fawned over the...

Gabrielle Stravelli

Mark Dundas Wood
In her recent one-off at Birdland, City Girl, Country Boy: Gabrielle Stravelli Sings Willie Nelson, the singer put a guitar-free jazz spin on some of the country legend's biggest hits—his self-penned songs, as well as other writers' titles that he's performed and/or recorded over the decades. Some performers might fret about just how smoothly this...

Norbert Leo Butz

Mark Dundas Wood
As a leading man in musicals, two-time Tony Award recipient Norbert Leo Butz has been very much a creature of his own era. He has appeared in six Broadway musicals since 1997, as well as in Off-Broadway's very successful The Last Five Years (2002). None of these shows was a revival, and all of them...