Sally Darling

Robert Windeler
Her current Don't Tell Mama show could be the one Sally Darling was truly born to do. Back in the 1970s she created four revues combining the songs of Noël Coward and Cole Porter. In her more recent cabaret shows, Darling has teased her audiences with generous samplings of Coward's vast body of work. But...

Matt DiPasquale

Mark Dundas Wood
"Neither Here nor There," Matt DiPasquale's engaging show at the Duplex, is a solo act, but for some reason he uses three separate microphones, spread evenly across the front of the stage. Is he working some metaphor—perhaps suggesting that he's not sure of where he stands? Or maybe that he has three times as much...

The Kinsey Sicks

Gerry Geddes
Back in the day, the great Charles Ludlam formed the Ridiculous Theatrical Company and brought drag to a new and unique plateau—not using cross-dressing for just fun and camp, but to comment on theatre, on society, on gender expectations. If he had expanded into cabaret, he might well have come up with something like The...

Christopher Timson

Gerry Geddes
Sometimes, not often enough, the stars align and the gods of cabaret look down on a show and everything that can go right, miraculously, does and everything that can go wrong, even more miraculously, does not. That is what happened in Christoper Timson's show "#TBT: A Chubby Boy's Guide to Growing Up Normal" at Feinstein's/54...

Chita Rivera

Mark Dundas Wood
At one point during the opening night of her Café Carlyle debut show, "An Evening of My Favorite Songs," Chita Rivera noted that she has been running around for years just being her 35-year-old self, without noticing exactly how much time has elapsed. If this show is any indication, the Rivera approach to aging is...

The Quentin Tarantino Songbook

Gerry Geddes
It is a well-known fact that in addition to being an accomplished director, Quentin Tarantino is a lover of movies. His films are filled with homages and "quotes" from classic and pulp movies. Anyone who has seen his work also quickly realizes that he loves "old" music—often songs and themes from earlier films and generations....

Celia Berk

Robert Windeler
No sophomore slump here. On the contrary, Celia Berk's new Metropolitan Room show, "Manhattan Serenade," is even better than her remarkable debut outing of last season. Under the fluid direction of Jeff Harnar, Berk seems to have broadened her ability to embrace an audience while simultaneously assessing her bone-deep feelings about the subjects that concern...

Jennifer Roberts

Robert Windeler
Lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who will turn 92 on April 30, could hardly have asked for a more exuberant or heartfelt early birthday celebration than the one Jennifer Roberts threw for him in the form of her show at Don't Tell Mama, "Jennifer Roberts: She Loves…Sheldon!" Her upfront fan-girl enthusiasm for her favorite lyric writer, dating...

Midnight at the Never Get

Gerry Geddes
Midnight at the Never Get, a new musical chronicling the tumultuous birth and rise of the Gay Liberation Movement through the relationship of two men whose lives intersect with this historic moment, is being given its inaugural workshop at Don't Tell Mama. The characters are fictional, but the play manages to pack a lot of historical...

Madame Mathieu’s Soirée

Gerry Geddes
Drew Fornarola is certainly not one to rest on his laurels. His play Straight (co-written with Scott Elmegreen) is enjoying a successful, critically acclaimed run. For others, this would be more than enough for a season, but Fornarola has fashioned another ongoing entertainment to delight New York audiences: Madame Mathieu's Soirée. Its premise is that...