Hal Linden

Roy Sander
In his Café Carlyle debut show, Hal Linden celebrates nostalgia and commemorates his six-decades-and-counting career in show business. At age 83, he still has a sturdy baritone, and the evening has many first-rate moments. Linden's big Broadway break came in 1957, when he understudied and then replaced Sydney Chaplin in Bells are Ringing, and he...

Clark Warren

Robert Windeler
A self-described member of "the geezerhood," Clark Warren surely deserves a nicer-sounding appellation. After all, this gentleman of a certain age evinces many of the admirable qualities of advanced years: self-confidence, curiosity, a firm grasp on his field of endeavor, a spirit of adventure, and no-nonsense delivery of whatever he wants to say or sing,...

Carol Shedlin

Tonya Pinkins
An evening with Carol Shedlin's new show, "Child of the '30s," is a walk into a black-and-white movie. Her opening number, "Are you Having Any Fun?" (Jack Yellen, Sammy Fain), perfectly conjures her 1930's childhood built of make believe as her parents "lived in style and grace as the money dwindled." Shedlin cuts a striking...

Linda Miller

Kevin Scott Hall
Actress and singer Linda Miller, who recently played Ronnie Spector in the HBO film Phil Spector, brings her imitative powers to life at Stage 72 with her show "Legendary Ladies of Music." Not content to just vocally mimic the legends, Miller has a costume and wig change for each one, making a remarkable transformation into...

Libby York

Mark Dundas Wood
There's something to be said sometimes for the loose, anything-goes quality of a song set in a jazz club, as opposed to the more formal ambience of a cabaret show. A "go-with-the-flow" vibe presides. There's less concentration, it seems, on the tidiness and polish of the whole package and more focus on what happens as...

Frank Torren

Mark Dundas Wood
There are cabaret shows that challenge and even rattle an audience's sensibilities. And then there are shows that comfort and reassure. Frank Torren's "Moment to Moment" falls decidedly in the latter category. Call Torren's approach old-fashioned and you won't be wrong. But that deep, smooth, and warm voice of his is a tonic without a...

Tommy Tune

Mark Dundas Wood
Is Broadway showman Tommy Tune too oversized a talent to be contained by a cabaret stage? The answer seems to be: literally yes, but figuratively no. As Tune told the audience at the opening performance of his Café Carlyle-debut show, "More Taps, Tunes and Tall Tales," his celebrated height put him in danger of sustaining a...

Shakina Nayfack

Tonya Pinkins
The legendary cabaret artist Marilyn Maye says of cabaret, "You don't have to be anything but who you are." Shakina Nayfack is the epitome of Maye's comment. In her evening at Sophie's at Broadway, she shares every inch of her six-and-a-half-foot, high-heeled, shaved head, tattooed, boy/girl, transgendered, feminist, Radical Faerie self with her audience. I...

New York’s Next Top Drag Queen Contest

Kevin Scott Hall
Perhaps taking his cue from the success of the club's summer MetroStar Talent Challenge, the Metropolitan Room's Joseph Macchia—one of the busiest cabaret producers on the scene—has come up with "New York's Next Top Drag Queen Contest," now in its second year. It runs every Monday night until the winner is crowned on May 5....

Roslyn Kind

David Munk
Roslyn Kind has returned to her hometown with the debut of her new club act, appropriately called "It's Been a While," at 54 Below. On opening night, an endearingly nervous Kind shared a set with her receptive audience that alternately reflected both her notable strengths and unique challenges as an artist. Looking sexy and trim in...