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.

Keri Heidecker

Mark Dundas Wood
"Freak Magnet" The Duplex  –  July 29, August 20, 27 "Comedian/singer Keri Heidecker has always attracted freaks. And she is one." So read an online tag for her show, "Freak Magnet." The idea piqued my interest. I imagined something approximating early John Waters movies, only in a cabaret setting. I didn't necessarily imagine that, as...

Gregory Michael Castoria

Mark Dundas Wood
"Bette Midler Already Did This Show" The Duplex  –  July 21, 30, August 18 Taking a page, perhaps, from Rufus Wainwright's recreation of Judy Garland's 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, Gregory Michael Castoria has come up with a smart, funny, and touching rendering of a classic Bette Midler performance. This is no drag show—Castoria appears in...

Rosalyn McClore

Mark Dundas Wood
"Cry Me a River" Metropolitan Room  -  July 24, 31 There's no denying that Rosalyn McClore possesses bountiful musical talents, both as singer and pianist. She seems to connect in a very deep way with the music she sings, which runs the gamut from blues to gospel to pop to jazz. At her hour-long show...

You’ve Got Hate Mail

Mark Dundas Wood
The Triad  –  Fridays at 7 pm You couldn't ask for much simpler, more economic staging than what director Gary Shaffer has provided for Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore's cybersex comedy, You've Got Hate Mail. Five actors are lined up downstage on the small proscenium platform of the Triad, seated behind laptop computers. When...

Susan Siegel

Mark Dundas Wood
"Starts & Stops" The Duplex  –  June 5, 12, 19 Among the songs that singing actress Susan Siegel included in her Duplex show was Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields's "It's Not Where You Start" from Seesaw, which begins with the lyrics "It's not where you start, it's where you finish/ It's not how you go,...

Marissa Mulder

Mark Dundas Wood
"Look to Your Heart: The Songs of Jimmy Van Heusen" The Metropolitan Room  –  June 4, 8, 16 Listening to Marissa Mulder, I was reminded of the old Baldwin organ my father had in the 1960s, a model that had a panel of tabs beside the keyboard that you would flip to get different effects:...

11 O’Clock Numbers at 11 O’Clock

Mark Dundas Wood
Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  Thursdays at 11 pm There's a hazard with putting together a show consisting of "11 o'clock numbers"—those songs placed late in the second act of a musical in order to pump up the audience before the final curtain. So many of these songs have an accelerating emotional trajectory that results finally...

Laura Benanti

Mark Dundas Wood
"Let Me Entertain You" Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  May 1 and 22, 2011 Laura Benanti's legit vocal chops, physical beauty, and radiant stage presence work together to invoke comparisons to elegant early-1960s musical-theatre songstresses. If she'd been born a few decades earlier, Benanti would have competed for Broadway roles with such classy performers as...

Champagne Pam (Pamela Lewis)

Mark Dundas Wood
"Champagne Pam is…'The Dog Walking Diva!'" Don't Tell Mama  –  April 13, 14, 15 Using a clever packaging strategy, Champagne Pam arrived onstage wearing a leopard-patterned jacket, accented with a flute of bubbly and a large, leopard-patterned bag. From the top of her act, she subliminally suggested the pampered, exotic feline, ready to tease and...

Catherine Russell

Mark Dundas Wood
Allen Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center – March 30 & 31 Catherine Russell's well-publicized Allen Room appearance generated a real sense of occasion—the feeling that here was a singing artist in full musical bloom. The show featured many cuts from the singer's recently released CD, Strictly Romancin'. But the set was also a tribute to...