Stephen Hanks - Page 9

Sofia's Downstairs Theatre and it's sister restaurant on West 46th Street--the site where the Luca Brasi murder scene was filmed for The Godfather--may now sleep with the fishes, but Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, who for the past five years and more than 500 shows have been playing at the venue and keeping alive the big band music of the jazz and swing eras of the 1920s, will be swimming upstream to a new home at the Iguana Restaurant on 54th Street (between Broadway and 8th Avenue). Giordano was forced to move when earlier this summer The Hotel Edison decided not to renew Sofia Restaurant's lease (after jacking up the rent exponentially). The Nighthawks, who played at Sofia's downstairs club every Monday and Tuesday nights from 8 to 11pm, will have the same weekly performance schedule at Iguana beginning on September 9. The cover will be $15 with a $20 food/drink minimum.

New York cabaret performer and musical theater actress Liz McKendry (currently appearing the musical Boeing, Boeing at the Cape May Stage until September 13) has been cast to portray late 19th-early 20th-Century Theater legend Fay Templeton in Up in a Balloon, a one-woman comedy about Templeton's life and career, written by New York actress Karen McDonald. The show, which previously had successful workshops in New York and Toronto, will be performed today, September 1 at 3pm on the Cape May Stage at The Robert Shackleton Playhouse in Cape May, New Jersey. Admission is free. (Theater is located at 405 Lafayette Street.)

New York cabaret performer and musical theater actress Liz McKendry (currently appearing the musical Boeing, Boeing at the Cape May Stage until September 13) has been cast to portray late 19th-early 20th-century theater legend Fay Templeton in Up in a Balloon, a one-woman comedy about Templeton's life and career, written by New York actress Karen McDonald. The show will be performed on Sunday, September 1 at 3pm on the Cape May Stage at The Robert Shackleton Playhouse in Cape May, New Jersey. Admission is free. (Theater is located at 405 Lafayette Street.)

In cabaret, there are variety shows and there are VARIETY shows. Going on close to three years as a reviewer and attending a myriad of these affairs that can range in feel from Ed Sullivan to the Gong Show, I no longer have much patience for the lower case version. But every once in a while there's a multi-performer extravaganza that screams capital letters. It turns out that MAC-Award winning singer Lauren Fox has acquired the knack for staging 'Big V' variety shows because they are all about the themes, the stories, and the music, and not about the performers. And wouldn't you know it? With the egos being upstaged by everyone's joy and passion for the project, everybody wins . . . especially the audience. That was the case last night at 54 Below with the Fox produced 'One Night of Peace & Music: A Tribute to Woodstock.'

On August 17, led by current Society President Jan Hernstat of Long Island, New York, the IAJS will hold its 17th annual Long Island Al Jolson Festival, from 9am to 4:30 pm, at Oceanside Knights of Columbus, 2985 Kenneth Place, Oceanside, NY 11572. Starring at this year's event will be Staten Island-based singer Tony Babino (known as "The Heart of Al Jolson) with Dave Gross at the Piano. Babino will be performing from 2:30-3:30. Also appearing will be Los Angeles-based entertainer Richard Halpern (called "Mr. Tin Pan Alley"), singer/songwriter Brian Gari, who is the grandson of the legendary Broadway star Eddie Cantor. This year's special guest will be the famed TV and radio talk show host Joe Franklin. There will also be a special Jolson DVD Presentation and a Society Auction consisting of donated memorabilia.

Richard 'Bick' Goss, a noted New York City-based theater director and choreographer, former Bob Fosse dancer, and the Founder and Co-Artistic Director (with Frank Evans) of the non-profit musical theater development organization, Musical Mondays Theatre Lab, died this past Saturday, August 3, from complications related to Parkinson's Disease, which Mr. Goss had battled for more than five years. He was 75 years old.

Given the insular and in-clubby world that is the New York cabaret scene (by nature, not by design), it can be a struggle for non-celebrity, out-of-town performers to generate an audience when they mount shows in Manhattan. One singer facing that dilemma is lovely, Boston-based Lynda D'Amour, a terrific talent who is popular in the Beantown area but hasn't built enough of a following in the Apple to pack a room. Her crowd was again sparse on Sunday afternoon July 28 for the opening of her new show, The Hungry Years (she'll be making the commute again on August 11 and 25, both at 4pm at Don't Tell Mama), which is a shame because D'Amour possesses a strong vocal instrument that would rank her among this area's most accomplished female singers if only she was a New Yawker.

With the International Al Jolson Society's 17th Annual Long Island Festival just three weeks away (On August 17, from 9am to 4:30pm, at Oceanside Knights of Columbus, 2985 Kenneth Place, Oceanside, NY 11572.), BroadwayWorld.com Cabaret Review/Columnist and passionate Al Jolson fan Stephen Hanks fantasizes about what it might be like to have a conversation with 'The World's Greatest Entertainer,' 53 years after he died. You ain't read nothin' yet.

On August 17, led by current Society President Jan Hernstat of Long Island, New York, the IAJS will hold its 17th annual Long Island Al Jolson Festival, from 9am to 4:30 pm, at Oceanside Knights of Columbus, 2985 Kenneth Place, Oceanside, NY 11572. Starring at this year's event will be Staten Island-based singer Tony Babino (known as “The Heart of Al Jolson) with Dave Gross at the Piano. Babino will be performing from 2:30-3:30. Also appearing will be Los Angeles-based entertainer Richard Halpern (called “Mr. Tin Pan Alley”), singer/songwriter Brian Gari, who is the grandson of the legendary Broadway star Eddie Cantor. This year's special guest will be the famed TV and radio talk show host Joe Franklin. There will also be a special Jolson DVD Presentation and a Society Auction consisting of donated memorabilia.

Devin Bing's show last Thursday night (the fourth of five dates at the Metropolitan Room over this spring and summer, with the next one on August 15) may have been performed in a cabaret club, but it was more a contemporary jazz/pop concert than it was a 'cabaret show.' The story theme on this occasion was 'Devin Bing,' as the ambitious young crooner strives to establish himself as the second coming of his musical hero Harry Connick, Jr., but with Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, and Michael Buble colors in his cooly-delivered vocals of original tunes and covers of jazz and Great American Songbook classics. On stage, Bing conveys a confidence that verges on cockiness, but he sprinkles just enough self-deprecation on his swagger to avoid a flavor of smarminess.

The Major League Baseball All-Star break (the game is on Tuesday night) has always been considered the midpoint of the season and as a lifelong fan I've always enjoyed reading those analyses from writers that assess the best performances of the first half. Since July is also the middle of the calendar year, I thought it might be fun to present a cabaret equivalent of a baseball midseason report. So . . . (drum roll) . . . presenting the Best (and My Favorite) 20 New York Cabaret Shows and Performances of (the first half) of 2013.

About halfway through Jim Brochu's Saturday, June 29 performance at the Metropolitan Room of his new show Character Man, I realized I was witnessing what was probably the best cabaret show I'd seen this year, and perhaps was one of the best in my almost three years of reviewing cabaret. By the time the show ended, I had changed my mind. Not because the show fell apart in the second half, but because what Jim Brochu had created (and is opening tonight at the Broward Stage Door Theatre in Coral Springs, Florida, where it will be performed until August 11) was more than a cabaret show. Character Man is a delightful, extremely well-crafted Off-Broadway theater piece that is destined for a run that might rival his critically-acclaimed one-man Zero Mostel tribute show, Zero Hour, which played throughout the country between 2006-2012 and earned Brochu 2010 Drama Desk and Helen Hayes Awards.

Back on April 1, when he posted his third compilation of delayed cabaret reviews from shows staged during the winter, BroadwayWorld.com's lead New York cabaret reviewer promised Number 4 would come with arrival of summer. Okay, so he missed his self-imposed deadline by a couple of weeks. but here's yet another catch-up column with critiques of a half dozen spring shows performed by Bryan Batt, Dawn Derow, Lynly Forrest, Dennis McNeil, Anastasia Barzee, and Nina Hennessey.

On the evening of June 22, I would be doing the third performance of my Don McLean Tribute show at the Metropolitan Room, but I had heard enough buzz about Los Angeles-based, former New Yorker Joanne Tatham that I wanted to catch the last staging of her show Soundtrack, New York: Music from Movies Made in Manhattan at the same venue that afternoon. Hey, a cabaret reviewer's work is never done. Besides, with my gig hours away, I felt my mental state would be best served catching someone else's show rather than climbing the walls thinking about my own. Overall, experiencing Ms. Tatham's performance turned out to be a very good use of my pre-show time.

Only two nights removed from the last of my three solo debut shows at the Metropolitan Room celebrating the Don McLean Songbook, I was already experiencing the post-performance depression I'd heard tell about from cabaret veterans. I needed someone to lift me up where I belonged, so my instincts took me to Birdland for another trip through memory lane with Nostalgic Natalie Douglas. The last time I had heard the dynamic Ms. Douglas was 14 months before when she powered her way through her historically and politically passionate Freedom Songs. This time, Natalie's nostalgic trip was a much more personal adventure she called Scrapbook 2.0, which traversed everything from the musical influences of her late parents to the tunes she loved while growing up in Southern California. By the time Douglas was finished flipping the pages of her musical scrapbook--and delivering some adorably homey stories along with them--my gloom had been transformed into gladness.

About a third of the way into Tony Award-winner Faith Prince's new show at 54 Below last Wednesday night (the second of a five-show run over six days), it hit me that I could be watching a potential future cabaret legend in action. You know, in the Barbara Cook, Marilyn Maye, Andrea Marcovicci, Ann Hampton Callaway category. I felt Prince's new effort--'Have a Little Faith'--was one of the few shows I've seen at 54 Below--especially from a Broadway star--that was a true 'cabaret show' in the way most people define cabaret.

As a big fan of cabaret shows that incorporate horn sections (as does Terese Genecco's monthly 'Little Big Band' efforts at Iridium or Carole J. Bufford's 2012 show, speakeasy., which featured Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks), I was more than a little jazzed to hear that compelling Streisand sound-alike Marieann Meringolo would be doing a package of her 'greatest cabaret hits' from past shows, but supported by a 7-piece band (including three horns--Richie Vitale on trumpet, Jonathan Kantor on tenor sax, and Danny Hall on trombone) for a gig spanning three weekend nights (May 31-June 2) that she and her director Eric Michael Gillett called 'Orchestrated.' In this case, 'orchestrated' unfortunately came across more like 'engineered' or 'manufactured.'

Unless the host is particularly warm, funny, and charismatic (think Dana Lorge and her new monthly vehicle at the Metropolitan Room) or the show is a way to champion a good cause (like Joseph Macchia's Cabaret Cares events), for the most part cabaret variety shows are clunky affairs which can be too long, too rambling, give too much time to average talent or not enough of a showcase to outstanding talent. I ran into one of the rare exceptions last month (April 23) in the form of the The Concerts for City Greens' First Annual Gala & 2012 Songwriting Contest Finale, a variety show at the Laurie Beechman Theatre that served as a fund raiser for the launch of a new non-profit called Music and Art for Green which will incorporate Concerts for City Greens within its umbrella.

Four songs into Lauren Robert's show at Iridium this past Tuesday night (her third appearance at the jazz club since last August), she was already producing her usual pulsating, percussive, and passionate presentation of hard-driving blues and soulful pop when the show took a transformative turn and reached a higher ground. The mature, sultry, blue-eyed blonde, whose sound goes beyond blue-eyed soul, put on her Louisiana accent cultivated from years playing down south with her old band, Mojo Hand, and told her audience that the set's fifth song was 'inspired by the swamps and sexy action of N'awlins.' Then Robert and her new band, which included three members of the old gang, really got their mojo going, jumped into a musical swamp boat and navigated through a Robert original called 'Two Alligators' (from Mojo Hand's 1992 album Zulu Parasol), an intense and rhythmic mix of blues, hard rock n' roll, and Zydeco, and that featured a cool background vocal arrangement and Robert playing a washboard-better known as a fotoi (fo-twa)-draped down her chest. Like an alligator, the song stalked and then snapped, and with Noe Matos supplying some frenetic percussion, it was a draw-dropping number that wouldn't let you stop bouncing in your seat.

Halfway through her opening night at 54 Below on Monday, Laura Benanti unveiled the evening's showstopper, a multi pop-song mix titled 'Inappropriate Medley.' No, Benanti didn't faux strip her way through the songs as if she was replaying her past role as Gypsy Rose Lee, but she frantically ripped through eight songs, including Beyonce's 'All the Single Ladies,' 'Old Man River,' Sonny & Cher's 'I Got You Babe,' Aretha Franklin's 'Respect,' and culminated the riff by boogying like Tina Turner on 'Proud Mary,' and playing a tambourine tossed over by her Musical Director/pianist Todd Almond. As the audience commenced with raucous cheering, an almost out-of-breath Benanti quipped, 'I can't wait to read the review tomorrow that says Laura Benanti is an idiot.' Well, Laura Benanti may be a lot of things, but idiot is not one of them.