In the new show, On a Beach, written and performed by Zachary Clause, the singer/actor presented a kaleidoscopic journey through beaches, Hollywood, gay life, the Great American Songbook, mortality, history, survival, therapy, air travel, age, and his own past and present. He established a beachhead of sorts on the tiny stage at Pangea as he […]
An older Desi Arnaz, played by Broadway actor Danny Bolero (In the Heights, and the currently-running Plaza Suite), enters the Brick Room at Don’t Tell Mama reminiscing about the past complete with some ambient sounds that seem like memories he is reliving. Then, with some of Arnaz’s recorded music in the background, the real band kicks […]
In an era where Marilyn Maye, Petula Clark, Sheila Jordan, and Shirley Bassey are still going strong with no sign of slowing down, it should come as no surprise that 86-year-old singer Beverley Church Hogan would release a CD as masterful, savvy and irresistibly entertaining as her new recording, Sweet Invitation. Church Hogan’s voice, like […]
The casual elegance of the cabaret room at Pangea on an early June night was the perfect setting for Lauren White’s celebration of the COVID-delayed release of her CD, Ever Since the World Ended, as part of Ben Cassara’s Spring Swing Jazz Series. It was a delightful showcase for her laid-back, conversational yet swinging vocals […]
“The Portrait” is one of Amanda McBroom’s most beautiful and beloved creations. I was reminded of it during her delightful new show, Crimes of the Heart, at Birdland, not because she sang it, but because I was amazed that she looked the same as when I had seen her decades ago at the old Ballroom […]
Gary Brumburgh was content to be a teacher until he happened to be cast in an amateur production of a Broadway musical; he was immediately smitten and left his former career to spend the next two decades studying acting and singing and appearing in myriad local productions, touring companies, and any musical he could find. […]
For most any cabaret show, performers will want to share something about themselves. They’ll note, for instance, what a particular song in their setlist means to them personally and why they decided to include it. But certain shows go well beyond that. Such presentations are essentially spoken-word memoirs—deeply personal and sometimes cathartic monologues punctuated with […]
Unique is the best word—maybe the only word—to describe the song-stacked narrative that Ann Talman has created for her cabaret act at Feinstein’s/54Below. She calls the show The Shadow of Her Smile, after the haunting, Oscar-winning song that Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster wrote for Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton to emote to in 1965’s The Sandpiper—but that’s […]
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 […]
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. Her legit soprano sound did take some time to sound fully warmed up, but fortunately […]
