Late Bloomin’ Jazz Man is the title of singer-lyricist Mark Winkler’s great new album as well as the title of his recent appearance at Pangea (as part of Ben Cassara’s Cool, Fall Jazz series) which celebrated both the recording and his welcome (and rare) return to New York City from his West Coast home. Accompanied […]
In Higher Love! A Pop Fantasia on Queer Themes, Ryan Frostig (a likeable, energetic, promising singer) saddled himself with a show that was as overwrought and overthought as its title. It was more of a theatre piece than a cabaret show, with big, amorphous ideas that, unfortunately, never achieved any real substance. All the coming-of-age/growing-up […]
If Dom DeLuise had decided to pursue a career in cabaret rather than in motion pictures, he could have done far worse than fashioning his performance after Steven Zumbo who recently presented a new show at Pangea. His was a perfect example of old school cabaret—a singer, a piano, and a stool, with a well-chosen […]
The dog days of summer are extending into September in New York City cabaret this year. Still recovering from the pandemic, isolation, distancing, masks and (now) monkey pox, it is not the most prolific season for performance and night life in the city. The Duplex is out of commission and other bastions of New York […]
Anyone who has seen the 2016 documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened might understandably assume that there was no need to get further insight into the famed failure that was Merrily We Roll Along. Anyone who has seen an autobiographical cabaret show by a Broadway performer might understandably assume that a show by one […]
If the Bistro Awards gave out an award for Outstanding Musical Archeologist, Elena Bennett would win hands down for her triumphant return to the New York cabaret stage with Fred Barton in Bennett & Barton: Swing Out Under the Moon! which recently debuted at Pangea. In an evening filled with classics (in quality if not […]
Bobby Peaco was one of the stalwarts of New York piano bars and cabaret for decades. His talent, wit and antic spirit livened up many of the city’s classic venues until a few years ago when he decided to move to Florida with his husband. He made a rare and welcome return to the cabaret […]
Showing up in bookstores and online this week is the posthumously published Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), written in tandem with the still-very-much-alive Jesse Green, chief theatre critic for The New York Times. Although we’re already well into August, there’s still time for those who like a […]
It is a tricky proposition to make a studio recording of a cabaret show; there are so many elements to consider. Most of the people who hear the recording will not have seen the show and will have no frame of reference other than the audio. Tempos, keys, arrangements, and order might need to be […]
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 […]
