Helane Blumfield

Robert Windeler
"Gender blending," as Helane Blumfield described the premise of "Call Me H!," her recent show at Don't Tell Mama, is not the same thing as gender bending. Rather, Blumfield employed her set of 15 songs—all but one of them both written and sung by men—as a plea to be oneself from early childhood, regardless of...

Minda Larsen

Mark Dundas Wood
Part of Minda Larsen's prize package for winning last summer's MetroStar Talent Challenge at the Metropolitan Room was a four-performance engagement at the club. Called "My Southern Song" and directed by Marilyn Maye, the resulting show has arrived. In it, Larsen—originally from Jacksonville, Florida—takes a look at her heritage, singing songs about the American South,...

Amy Jo Jackson

Gerry Geddes
When statuesque, platinum blonde Amy Jo Jackson entered Feinstein's/54 Below in her new show, "I Want To Be Your Man," she owned the stage by sheer physical force before she uttered a note. This turned out to be a very good thing because the show she presented took a bit of time to catch up...

Laurie Krauz & Daryl Kojak

Robert Windeler
In a time when most marriages don't last 25 years, it can be comforting to celebrate the silver anniversary of any quarter-century collaboration, in business or elsewhere. It's even better when everyone attending the party is clearly thrilled that the two principals have stayed together for two-and-a-half decades, and are still creating beautiful music. In...

Sally Kellerman

Mark Dundas Wood
Throughout her long acting and singing career, Sally Kellerman has been known for her offbeat qualities. She started working in movies and television in the late 1950s and early 1960s, but her devil-may-care breeziness served her especially well in the "New Hollywood" of the 1970s, a time when endearing eccentrics could flourish, especially when they...

Kim David Smith: Morphium Kabarett

Gerry Geddes
Morphium Kabarett at Pangea is an entertaining variety show created and hosted by singer Kim David Smith and music-directed by Tracy Stark. While many multi-performer evenings smack of financial consideration (more acts will bring more friends and family to fill the audience and pay more covers), this show and the guest artists so reflected the...

Cacophony Daniels

Gerry Geddes
Cacophony Daniels is the drag alter ego of Courter Simmons, a talented actor/singer who recently ended a run in Broadway's Jersey Boys. When Simmons was growing up he felt a special affinity for the songs, the characters, and the stories of lyricist and writer Howard Ashman. In his show "Under the 'C'," he used Cacophony...

Nasty Drew and That Harder Boy

Gerry Geddes
Nasty Drew and That Harder Boy: The Mystery of the Family Jewels is an homage to the childhood-favorite mystery series "Nancy Drew" and "The Hardy Boys" and at the same time the latest in a long line of campy, loose-limbed, enjoyably tasteless, envelope-pushing parodies of pop culture icons and tropes that is perhaps most famously epitomized...

Brian Nash & Nate Buccieri

Gerry Geddes
Brian Nash and Nate Buccieri are two of the best in the piano bar business. If one of them is at the piano, patrons are assured of a good time, great playing, strong vocals, high energy, and raucous humor. Having worked together on a number of, as they put it, "big gay cruises," they began...

Melinda Hughes

Robert Windeler
The somewhat generic title of her recent show at the Metropolitan Room, "An English Girl in New York," doesn't begin to describe the theme of the evening, nor the breadth of Melinda Hughes's talents. If anything, it read as if we might be hearing about a naïve young Dover sole out of water. Far from...