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.

Lillias White

Mark Dundas Wood
There is more than one way that cabaret can succeed. Some shows—Shana Farr's recent program of Noël Coward and Cole Porter songs, for example—are carefully manicured gardens. Everything has been planted with care and set to blossom on schedule, down to the last petal. This sort of show can make for a memorable, emotionally rich...

Pat Kirkwood Is Angry

Mark Dundas Wood
If Off-Broadway's recent one-woman musical Pat Kirkwood is Angry (directed by Lee Blakely) did nothing else, it certainly brought the late British music star Kirkwood to the greater attention of a number of American theatergoers. I knew of Kirkwood only because of the song "Love on a Greyhound Bus" (Ralph Blane, Kay Thompson, George Stoll),...

Kristoffer Lowe

Mark Dundas Wood
According to biographical notes provided to reviewers, Kristoffer Lowe is an award-winning classical singer and a musical-theatre actor who has previously worked largely in regional theatre, along with spending some time singing on a cruise ship. Perhaps in cabaret he has found an outlet in which his talents can flourish here in New York. Directed...

Joyce Breach

Mark Dundas Wood
For all I know, Joyce Breach sits at a piano or desk and maps out meticulously each moment of every song she sings—measuring every breath, polishing every phrase, tailoring every nuance. But that certainly doesn't appear to be the case. Breach—a performer who moves in both cabaret and jazz circles—seemingly just enters a song and...

Paul Chamlin and Rochelle Breyer Chamlin

Mark Dundas Wood
Right at the top of Paul Chamlin and Rochelle Breyer Chamlin's new Jule Styne tribute show, "Gems by Jule," at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, the performers set up the personas that will carry them through the evening. They start out musically with a Fanny Brice / Nick Arnstein duet from Funny Girl, "I Want to Be Seen With...

Libby York

Mark Dundas Wood
There's something to be said sometimes for the loose, anything-goes quality of a song set in a jazz club, as opposed to the more formal ambience of a cabaret show. A "go-with-the-flow" vibe presides. There's less concentration, it seems, on the tidiness and polish of the whole package and more focus on what happens as...

Frank Torren

Mark Dundas Wood
There are cabaret shows that challenge and even rattle an audience's sensibilities. And then there are shows that comfort and reassure. Frank Torren's "Moment to Moment" falls decidedly in the latter category. Call Torren's approach old-fashioned and you won't be wrong. But that deep, smooth, and warm voice of his is a tonic without a...

Tommy Tune

Mark Dundas Wood
Is Broadway showman Tommy Tune too oversized a talent to be contained by a cabaret stage? The answer seems to be: literally yes, but figuratively no. As Tune told the audience at the opening performance of his Café Carlyle-debut show, "More Taps, Tunes and Tall Tales," his celebrated height put him in danger of sustaining a...

Shana Farr

Mark Dundas Wood
Following a 2011 show that featured the music of Julie Andrews, Shana Farr returns with an ambitious program highlighting the music and lyrics of Noël Coward and Cole Porter. Thoughtfully assembled and heartfully rendered, the show is a sort of extended musical monologue that examines the contours of one woman's love life. It's a fine...

Gretchen Reinhagen

Mark Dundas Wood
Early in "Listen to the Music: The Songs of My 70's" (directed by Barry Kleinbort) Gretchen Reinhagen notes that in the 1970s, various pop-music genres—rock, country, funk, disco, and so on—all competed for the public's attention. In her program, she gives us samples from this bountiful and eclectic smorgasbord. But she doesn't stop there. She...