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.

The 23rd New York Cabaret Convention

Mark Dundas Wood
Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center  –  October 17, 18, 19 Gala Opening Night  -  by Mark Dundas Wood The gala opening night of the Mabel Mercer Foundation's 23rd New York Cabaret Convention—directed expertly by Rick Meadows—contained a number of bright, lively and even cheeky moments. But the festive character of the event was tempered...

Kathryne Langford

Mark Dundas Wood
"Jazz and Cocktails" Don't Tell Mama  –  September 14, October 5, November 11, December 9 Music critic Henry Pleasants once wrote of Peggy Lee: "She knows that when an actor stands stock still, characterization may begin with the twitch of a pinky, the lowering of the eyelids or a slight cocking of the head…." A...

Michael Hughes

Mark Dundas Wood
"Mickey and Judy" The Duplex  -  September 10, 15, 20 We've seen it before, of course. The one-person confessional about how an obsession with show business, most often in the form of movie musicals, helped the subject escape from or overcome a difficult and/or lonely childhood somewhere far away from the bright lights of Broadway...

Jason Robert Brown

Mark Dundas Wood
54 Below  –  September 10 - 15 There are many sorts of songs in the Jason Robert Brown songbook—songs of quiet yearning, songs of loss, straight-ahead-funny songs. But perhaps the songs that this bountifully talented composer-lyricist-singer-pianist is most at home with are those that burn with determination—with the insistence on making happiness happen, on making...

The Cat Pack

Mark Dundas Wood
Iridium  –  August 22 The Cat Pack is the 1960s' Rat Pack in an alternative universe—a place almost identical to the one that those earthlings lived in, but strangely devoid of tar and nicotine. The three singers who comprise the group—Tony Apicella, Jimmy Cargill, and Sonny Von Murray—don't impersonate Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joey Bishop, or...

Tituss Burgess

Mark Dundas Wood
"Because I Feel Like It" 54 Below  –  August 26 Though he’s known as a theatre singer (Jersey Boys, The Little Mermaid), Tituss Burgess flourishes off the boards in the realm of R&B music. His one-nighter at 54 Below allowed him to cut loose with an hour's worth of songs—some self-penned—that rocked, slow-danced, and threw out...

KT Sullivan and Larry Woodard

Mark Dundas Wood
"Glamorous Summer Nights" Laurie Beechman Theatre  -  June 20, July 24, August 22, September 19 At the top of their show at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, KT Sullivan and Larry Woodard sing a kaleidoscopic medley of song snippets, leading off with a variation on Stephen Sondheim's "Comedy Tonight" (called "Cabaret Tonight"). Here the pair tells...

Marc Eliot

Mark Dundas Wood
Jazz at Kitano  –  August 8 Leading off the "About Marc" page on singer-composer Marc Eliot's website is a quotation from the widow of Sammy Davis Jr. She claims that when she listened to Eliot's recording of Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner's "Come Back to Me," she thought she was hearing her late husband singing....

Barbara Elena Adamoli

Mark Dundas Wood
Don't Tell Mama  –  July 10, 11 In her first few numbers at Don't Tell Mama, lyric coloratura soprano Barbara Elena Adamoli didn't make a particularly positive impression. While the Verona, Italy-born singer demonstrated a sweet, sturdy voice that can flare with emotion, she seemed to connect neither with her audience nor with the songs...

Jackie Hoffman

Mark Dundas Wood
54 Below  –  June 3, 17, July 8, 15, 22, 29 Momentously, Patti LuPone opened the 54 Below cabaret space this June. But she wasn't the first artist to play there. That honor went to singer/comedian Jackie Hoffman. Her show has continued at the new venue, and, in it, Hoffman doesn't let us forget for a...