Club Review: Mason Alexander Park’s “The Pansy Craze”

Gerry Geddes
Mason Alexander Park’s The Pansy Craze at Chelsea Table + Stage was part TED talk on non-binary history, part hard rock cabaret show, and part showcase for Park’s obvious talents. They played Hedwig in the first national tour of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and regionally in I Am My Own Wife, Cabaret, and The...

Club Review: Kim David Smith’s “Mostly Marlene”

Gerry Geddes
Kim David Smith (Photo: José Alejandro Espaillat) On the eve of Halloween 2021, I ventured into Club Cumming in the East Village. It was festooned with cobwebs and an errant skull here and there; hanging from the ceiling throughout the bar were multiple close-up photos of Janet Leigh’s head just as...

Club Review: Gilbert D. Sanchez’s “Me and My Good Judys at Good Judy”

Gerry Geddes
Gilbert D. Sanchez I recently visited The Blue Room, a new (or at least new to me) cabaret upstairs from Good Judy, a friendly and comfortable gay bar on Fifth Ave in Brooklyn.  The show room is a tiny, bare bones space with an upright piano on the stage, decent lights,...

Club Review: “If It Only Even Runs a Minute — Celebrates the Underappreciated Musicals of Hal Prince”

Gerry Geddes
Harold Prince If It Only Even Runs a Minute, which recently returned to Feinstein’s/ 54 Below, is the brainchild of Jennifer Ashley Tepper and Kevin Michael Murphy who serve as genial, enthusiastic, informative hosts for a show dedicated to samples from and stories about the flops of Broadway history.  It is...

Club Review: Rian Keating’s “Time Stamps—Life Fragments in Story and Song”

Betsyann Faiella
Rian Keating (Photo: Susan Kirby) The skilled storyteller Rian Keating's Time Stamps—Life Fragments in Story and Song is a series of personal stories with music. The show took its structure from the assignments in a memoir writing class Rian attended. The device worked well, the stories time-stamped and full of dry and arresting intelligent humor,...

Club Review: Ann Kittredge’s “Movie Nite”

Penelope Thomas
Ann Kittredge (Photo here and below: Helane Blumfield) Ann Kittredge was in her element at Birdland Theater with her latest cabaret offering, “Movie Nite.” In a show packed with well-chosen songs from classic (and sometimes more contemporary) Hollywood, Kittredge and her team’s creative instincts were on-target: she sounded as if her...

CD Review: Kate McGarry and Keith Ganz Ensemble’s “What to Wear in the Dark”

Gerry Geddes
In their new CD, What to Wear in the Dark, the Kate McGarry and Keith Ganz Ensemble have fashioned a musically intriguing and emotionally satisfying response, not only to the pandemic but to the last decade or two of public and private wounds and monstrous elections. Kate McGarry has long been one of the brightest lights in...

CD Review: Jenna Esposito’s “More Amore—Songs from the Great Italian-American Songbook”

Lisa Jo Sagolla
Singer Jenna Esposito’s invigorating new album, More Amore: Songs from the Great Italian-American Songbook, is a family affair.  Its rousing arrangements are by the singer’s father, Fortune Esposito.  Her sister, Kelly Esposito-Broelmann, sings back-up, while her nephew, Charlie Broelmann, plays drums, and her husband, Jimmy Cannizzaro, serves as a percussionist and associate producer.  Everyone knows...

Club Review: Susan Mack’s “Music in the Air”

Gerry Geddes
When I am teaching a vocal performance class, I always stress that just because a singer loves to listen to a song doesn’t mean that the singer should sing it.  In the case of Susan Mack’s Music in the Air at Birdland, I would expand that to include if a singer loves a genre of...

Club Review: Scott Raneri’s “Extra! Extra! The Extra Adventures of an Actor”

Betsyann Faiella
Scott Raneri is a good singer with an extremely likable stage presence. He has a rich concept for a show in Extra! Extra! The Extra Adventures of an Actor. He’s good looking and has a ‘60s nightclub entertainer vibe, slight and slick, nicely put together. Scott is fairly new on the scene: This is his second...