Daryl Glenn

Robert Windeler
You would think that by now there couldn't possibly be a new way to present an all-Sondheim cabaret show. But, as Daryl Glenn proved in this recent Don't Tell Mama outing (directed by Vince DeGeorge), you'd be wrong about that. From the moment Glenn bounded onstage in a colorful paisley tailcoat and launched into his...

Ronnie Marmo: I’m Not a Comedian…I’m Lenny Bruce

Robert Windeler
Like most comics who came of age in the middle of the last century, Lenny Bruce started out on a fairly conventional path. After coming home from the World War II Army, he took a job as emcee at the club where his entertainer mother, Sally Marr, was working. "Stealing material from my mother," as...

Jennifer Bangs

Mark Dundas Wood
In her new show at Don't Tell Mama, She Bangs, She Bangs: Marriage, Adultery, Texas & Jesus, actress-singer Jennifer Bangs delivers one of the most soul-baring cabaret programs I have ever seen. The show (directed by Tanya Moberly) is a true confession, told in excruciating detail. Bangs relates the story of her broken marriage along...

Andrea Wolff

Robert Windeler
In her new show, I Can't Trace Time, directed by Dan Ruth and currently at The Green Room 42, Andrea Wolff stays true to her title premise by not offering a chronological autobiography, but, instead, presenting moments in, and aspects of, her life—and her thoughts about them—in no particular sequence. Employing an eclectic, effective array...

Jazz Bastards

Penelope Thomas
The Jazz Bastards are a hot mess. Or so they'd like you to think. If they're anyone's illegitimate children, it's not just jazz's—Les Paul is one possible father figure, as are any of the deadpan comedians from Buster Keaton on down to John Belushi, and perhaps Elvis Costello and Tom Waits are great-uncles. Their two...

Cynthia Crane

Mark Dundas Wood
More than once in This Is a Changing World, My Dear, her recent show at Don't Tell Mama, Cynthia Crane referred to herself as a "walking obsolescence." But, in fact, she and her show seemed quite timely. It took a wry look at cultural developments—some viewed as positive, but many not—that have left people of...

Black Light

Penelope Thomas
What if, at the crossroads of your life—where you have to make decisions that will save you or damn you forever—you were not alone? What if a high priestess met you there, tall and sparkling, wise and smiling, reaching out her hand to guide your poor, fumbling human heart and teach you that you were...

Kenneth Gartman

Robert Windeler
When doing any cabaret show that takes the form of a travelogue, it must be very tempting to open the show with "Come Fly with Me" (Sammy Cahn, Jimmy Van Heusen). That ubiquitous anthem to soaring holidays is used in a television commercial even today, some seven decades after its composition. In his recent show...

Branden & James

Robert Windeler
Both classically trained, but also separately exhibiting long-held pop and "legit" tendencies, singer Branden James and cellist James Clark have combined their considerable talents and have been touring internationally as a team. They recently introduced their new show, The Broadway Covers Project, at Feinstein's/54 Below, which venue James (i.e., Branden) aptly announced as "the Carnegie...

Barb Jungr and John McDaniel

Gerry Geddes
In their show 1968 – Let the Sun Shine In, recently at Birdland, Barb Jungr and John McDaniel dove into the amazingly rich pool of music that 1968 produced. It seemed a natural follow-up to their Beatles celebration, Come Together. Jungr, who has long been recognized as an incisive interpreter of popular music, was in rare...