Frances Ruffelle

Penelope Thomas
Frances Ruffelle’s voice sounds like diamond dust: just so pretty and so gritty that you could listen to it sparkle roughly for hours. If Éponine had had the chance to grow up, this is who she’d be: streetwise, lovelorn, and European…singing to share the hard-won wisdom she attained through heartbreak and owning that wild edge....

Christine Andreas

Gerry Geddes
Christine Andreas's show Love Is Good proved, once again, that she is a consummate cabaret performer. There could not have been a better closing engagement for Mark Nadler's wonderful (and wonderfully successful) summer cabaret series at the Beach Cafe. In the intimate space that feels as much like a living room as a music room,...

Leslie Carrara-Rudolph

Mark Dundas Wood
I'll never forget the day my brother and I were spurned by Wunda Wunda. The TV story lady of the Pacific Northwest was a tall, stately yet somehow dainty clown character. I was 8 and Brian was 6 when we had our encounter with Wunda at the Seattle World's Fair. While she fawned over the...

Gabrielle Stravelli

Mark Dundas Wood
In her recent one-off at Birdland, City Girl, Country Boy: Gabrielle Stravelli Sings Willie Nelson, the singer put a guitar-free jazz spin on some of the country legend's biggest hits—his self-penned songs, as well as other writers' titles that he's performed and/or recorded over the decades. Some performers might fret about just how smoothly this...

J. Michael Reeds and Marc McBarron Kessler

Gerry Geddes
Songwriter-pianist Marc McBarron Kessler could not hope to find a better interpreter of his song cycle, Ghost of Vaudeville, than actor-singer J. Michael Reeds, whose bravura performance on stage at Don't Tell Mama held my interest and attention even when the songs, themselves, faltered in that regard. Kessler is a talented composer and lyricist, but this...

Tom Goss

Gerry Geddes
Tom Goss is an out gay singer-songwriter, or more to the point, a singer-songwriter who happens to be an out gay man. He has built a following and a career primarily through an ongoing series of videos—by turns funny, provocative, heartwarming, dramatic—of his engaging songs. But he takes his sexual orientation as a given, so...

Tamra Paselk

Penelope Thomas
Awkward, Tamra Paselk's recent show at Don't Tell Mama (directed by Casey Burden), answered a few questions: are those high-rise pants that are coming back into style a good idea? YES. Should all performers hand out frozen treats at their cabaret? A thousand times YES. The bigger issues, however, were left somewhat unresolved. Since death...

Livingston Taylor

Gerry Geddes
The Rubin Museum of Art on W. 17th Street is a restful, almost zen-like space that inspires calm and contemplative silence. The museum's ongoing series, Naked Soul, takes place in a small, attractive performance space with cherry wood walls and a lone piano center stage. The mission of the series is to present completely acoustic events—no...

Ian & Elliot Finkel

Penelope Thomas
With Ian on xylophone and Elliot on piano, the Finkel brothers owned the stage at the Metropolitan Room on September 9 as if variety-show acts were still going strong and winning us over—not only with shtick, but also with quality and integrity. The Finkels are the sons of Emmy and Obie award-winning actor Fyvush Finkel (1922-2016),...

Dietrich Rides Again

Robert Windeler
I can't help it. I had planned on falling in love with Marlene all over again when I went to see Dietrich Rides Again. But, alas, it didn't happen. I had seen the legendary star almost fifty years before, on what we all believed was to be her farewell tour. (She was to do several...