Penelope Thomas

Credits include lead vocals for two albums with prog rock band FauveMuseum; background vocals with Shellen Lubin, and US & UK tours of Mikel Rouse’s "The End of Cinematics." She’s read poet Anne Carson’s work at The Whitney Museum and played leads in HBO Women in Comedy Festival-selected film "Pretty Dead" and the indie film, "The Interview." She studied voice with Norma Garbo, music theory with bassist Mark Wade, LoVetri Somatic Voicework through Baldwin Wallace University, and acting with Deena Levy. She taught in the New School’s Sweat musical theatre intensive. With a degree in Cultural Studies & Anthropology and a background in contemporary dance, Penelope loves thinking and writing about performance—connecting the dots between styles and genres and supporting the connection between artists and audiences.

Penelope Thomas

Club Review: “Ann Hampton Callaway Sings Peggy Lee and the Songs of the ’70s”

Penelope Thomas
Ann Hampton Callaway is a seasoned jazz artist, songwriter, an interpreter of the American Songbook, and an entertainer who knows how to work a crowd—especially when her ex-husband is bravely sitting in the front row. Her show at 54 Below on Sunday, January 15 was a half-and-half evening of Peggy Lee and 1970s pop, which...

Club Review: Shana Farr’s “Dream Reality”

Penelope Thomas
Shana Farr is a beautiful singer. She looks beautiful. She was beautifully prepared for her show Dream Reality at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. Her life story, give or take 1.5 minor hiccups, sounded beautiful. She likes beautiful songs about dreams. She can hit high theatre soprano notes, seemingly effortlessly, and, yes, very beautifully. Shana Farr...

Theatre Review: Melissa Etheridge in “My Window—A Journey Through Life”

Penelope Thomas
Melissa Etheridge (Photo: Elizabeth Miranda) When a Rockstar wants to do a theatre piece you hope it’s going to be good; that they make the leap to a new genre and take it seriously. Melissa Etheridge’s show, My Window: A Journey Through Life currently running at New World Stages, delivers. It is intelligently conceived,...

Club Review: Josephine Sanges’s “The Funny Girl in Me”

Penelope Thomas
In cabaret, the overall quality of a performer is often much more important than the beauty of a voice—or even the skill of a vocalist; I’ve gradually been won over to the side of acting choices. But Josephine Sanges’s sound stopped me in my tracks. She has the bright ping-ring quality of Streisand in her...

Club Review: “Broadway’s Next Hit Musical”

Penelope Thomas
You know that gothic musical, Haunted Garden, and its brooding lament that’s been done to death: The Pavement Grows Flowers While Our Garden Is Empty? It’s a chestnut in the American Songbook.  Cue record scratch. Um—no, you don’t know it. It’s never been heard before and you’ll never hear it again—it existed in an instant...

Club Review: Kavita Shah

Penelope Thomas
I first heard vocalist and composer Kavita Shah accidentally. Needing a walk after a long day last fall, I wandered over to  55 Bar, a classic West Village dive jazz club where many of the greats have played and where the cover is $5. (Ed. Note: 55 Bar recently closed.) It was Diwali, the Hindu...

Club Review: Madelaine Warren’s “Invitation”

Penelope Thomas
Madelaine Warren’s most recent cabaret offering, Invitation, featured well-chosen, often cinematically-inspired repertory from 1933-1989. Warren brought conviction and emotional connection to this set, packed with romantic songs that took her on an arc from joy to disappointment and back again. Madelaine Warren (Photo: Michael Bernhaut) Her legit soprano sound did take...

Club Review: Meg Flather’s “Rodgers & Hammerstein 2021+”

Penelope Thomas
If you ever get stuck in thinking that the Rodgers & Hammerstein songbook can be dated and dusty, you haven’t yet heard Meg Flather sing from it. With multiple albums as a singer-songwriter, her legit sound is sweet, easy, and perfectly blended—and personal. That’s a tricky thing to do, to sing standards as if you...

Club Review: Susanne Mack’s “Fragments”

Penelope Thomas
Almost all of the cabarets I’ve seen in the last year have seen performers grappling to make sense of the pandemic lifestyle: the grief of missing their collaborators and audiences, and the gratitude and growing pains of returning to the stage again. Susanne Mack’s Fragments at Pangea tracked the process of putting the pieces back...

Club Review: Celia Berk’s “On My Way to You—Improbable Stories That Inspired an Unlikely Path”

Penelope Thomas
Celia Berk drew a large and enthusiastic crowd to the Laurie Beechman Theatre for “On My Way to You: Improbable Stories That Inspired an Unlikely Path.” Berk brought a room-filling sincerity and warmth that was wisely punctuated with humor. “Anything I Can Do” (Irving Berlin from Annie Get Your Gun) featured lyrics changed to “Anything...