Tovah Feldshuh

Penelope Thomas
If Leona Helmsley were in purgatory and she had a free pass to spend an hour topside, would she do a cabaret? It's a great premise. You've got to hand it to Alex Lippard for thinking that this would be a timely moment to wonder how a nasty, larger-than-life New York real estate mogul could...

Steven Zumbo

Mark Dundas Wood
"You know, we eschew themes," Steven Zumbo announced early in his recent show at Don't Tell Mama, a two-night engagement directed by Helen Baldassare. (He could have added that show titles would also be shunned—he dispensed with that convention as well.) The theme-free policy was fine by Zumbo's enthusiastic audience, and fine by me, too....

Jason Henderson

Mark Dundas Wood
Presenting an entire program of Noël Coward numbers would, I imagine, give many an American cabaret singer pause. Whose songs are more steadfastly British—not only in lyrical content but also in sound and style? (OK, Gilbert and Sullivan's, but who else's?) Also, Coward is one of the rare musical talents of his generation and genre...

Kendra Cunningham

Mark Dundas Wood
Kendra Cunningham is a good human being. Or, at any rate, she’s trying hard to be one. Growing up in a Catholic, Irish-Lithuanian-American household, she began saying affirmations at age 13. Her favorite is “I love and adore myself,” a motto that has apparently morphed into a full-blown mantra to counter her frequent self-doubts. At...

Alan Cumming

Gerry Geddes
Alan Cumming is a Broadway star, a movie star, a television star, and an author, but seeing him at Joe's Pub in his new show, Legal Alien, it is apparent that the cabaret stage is where his myriad talents really shine. Immigration, strong women, and aging are the trio of themes revealed as the evening...

Joyce Lyons

Gerry Geddes
Joyce Lyons titled her welcome return to Don't Tell Mama The Music of the '60s…Jazz Style, but after delivering a fiery "Yesterdays" (Jerome Kern, Otto Harbach) she admitted that it was a lie. As she started to put the show together, she realized that little if any of the material was from that decade—but when...

Andrea Axelrod

Robert Windeler
It would take a daring performer with solid and wide-ranging singing chops and a sense of humor to pull off an effective and memorable tribute to six major musical artists from the last century in a one-hour show. Fortunately for us in the audience, Andrea Axelrod was more than up to this task in Centenary,...

Rachel Ulanet

Penelope Thomas
The theme Rachel Ulanet explored in her solo debut at Feinstein's/54 Below was her quest for integrity at a politically conflicted time; it centered around the third song in the set, Neil Young's "Heart of Gold." This was Young's only U.S. #1 single; interestingly, it was recorded at a time when a back injury pushed him...

Marcos Valle

Mark Dundas Wood
Brazilian songwriter, singer, and keyboardist Marcos Valle has been an international musical presence since the early 1960s. Looking at displays of his album covers online, you can trace his march of time. There's Valle, just a kid—bright-eyed, clean-cut, and turtle-necked. And there he is a few years later, propped up shirtless in a bed—his hair...

Mark Anthony Lee

Gerry Geddes
For his debut at The Triad, singer Mark Anthony Lee chose a tried-and-true staple of cabaret: songs sung by his favorite singers and recording artists. But this was by no means a run-of-the-mill soul/R&B concert. He didn't sing the usual hits, but instead made unexpected choices from deep in these artists' repertoires—album tracks that had...