Carla DelVillaggio

Robert Windeler
"Streisand: The Greatest Star" Laurie Beechman Theatre  -  July 11, 18, 25 If you, like me, long ago grew tired of men in drag lip-synching to Barbra Streisand records and calling that an impersonation, have I got a girl for you. A Real Live Girl. Carla DelVillaggio, an RLG based in Florida, made her New...

Jenifer Lewis

Roy Sander
"Black Don't Crack at 54 Below" 54 Below  -  July 24 - 28 Transporting me from the airport to my hotel when, in the 1990s, I went to Berlin for the first time, the taxi drove through the Brandenburg Gate. Though the driver couldn't have seemed more blasé about the fact that traffic could once...

Barbara Elena Adamoli

Mark Dundas Wood
Don't Tell Mama  –  July 10, 11 In her first few numbers at Don't Tell Mama, lyric coloratura soprano Barbara Elena Adamoli didn't make a particularly positive impression. While the Verona, Italy-born singer demonstrated a sweet, sturdy voice that can flare with emotion, she seemed to connect neither with her audience nor with the songs...

The Sensational Josephine Baker

Robert Windeler
Beckett Theatre–Theatre Row  -  June 26 – September 8 As a singular performer in the famed night clubs of Paris in the 1920s and for decades thereafter, the American-born Josephine Baker certainly deserved the appellation "sensational." But her reputation deserves more than this diffuse and often confusing bio-play, which contains too much music more recently...

Jackie Hoffman

Mark Dundas Wood
54 Below  –  June 3, 17, July 8, 15, 22, 29 Momentously, Patti LuPone opened the 54 Below cabaret space this June. But she wasn't the first artist to play there. That honor went to singer/comedian Jackie Hoffman. Her show has continued at the new venue, and, in it, Hoffman doesn't let us forget for a...

Bitches of the Kingdom!

Roy Sander
Don't Tell Mama  –  Thursdays, June 14 – July 26 Not so long ago, composer/lyricist Dennis T. Giacino wondered whether the Disney fairytale princesses really did live happily ever after. This moment of contemplation led to his writing the forthcoming off-Broadway musical Disenchanted!, in which the princesses bitch about the way they have been portrayed in...

Rochelle Breyer Chamlin & Paul Chamlin

Roy Sander
"All at Sea: Songs on the Theme of Water" Don't Tell Mama: June 5, 13;  Metropolitan Room: August 7 Over the past few years, pianist/singer Paul Chamlin and his wife, singer Rochelle Breyer Chamlin, have presented several shows, all of them entertaining and all of them marked by a far-reaching and resourceful eye for material...

Jack Jones

Mark Dundas Wood
Feinstein's at Loews Regency  –  June 26 - 30 "I know your image of me is what I hope to be." When Jack Jones sang that line from Leon Russell's "A Song for You," early in his program at Feinstein's, I felt he was confessing something expressly to me. I have often found myself defending...

Ruth Carlin

Kevin Scott Hall
"SongMoments" The Duplex  –  June 28, 30, July 25 In her new show, "SongMoments," Ruth Carlin showed herself to be a quirky, likeable singer true to her art and her heart. With her unique, cinnamon-tinged, tremulous alto, Carlin conveyed both strength and vulnerability in a program that displayed intelligent song choices from an interesting variety...

Brian d’Arcy James

Roy Sander
"Under the Influence" 54 Below  –  June 26 - 30 Brian d'Arcy James comes to 54 Below with "Under the Influence," an evening of pop songs that influenced him when he was growing up in Michigan in the '80s. Though he has enjoyed considerable success and recognition for his work on- and off-Broadway and in television...