Stephen Hanks - Page 10

It isn't called 'The Longest Running Nightclub Act on Broadway' for nothing. Terese Genecco and her eight-piece 'Little Big Band' are back at The Iridium (1650 Broadway at 51st Street) to celebrate their 99th and 100th performances at the venue on Tuesday, May 20th (shows at 8:30 pm & 10:30 pm.) The multi-award-winning singer/bandleader/comedian continues to light up Times Square with her unique brand of 50's-era Rat Pack-inspired musical mayhem.

If you are even a semi-regular reader of this column of reviews, you know that about every three or four months, I post a compilation of observations of shows from the previous quarter of the year. This cabaret critiquing mash up happens for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I admittedly see too many cabaret shows for the amount of time I have to promptly review them (and then, of course, the usual writer's procrastination sets in). So I have to prioritize the timeliness of the reviews based on the prestige of the performer, the length of a show run, the strength (or lack thereof) of the performance, etc. The quality of the shows in these compilations—which can range from a half dozen to a dozen reviews in one shot—are usually a mixed bag of outright raves, qualified positives, and constructive pans (I'm not a fan of the word “negative” in the reviewer lexicon). With that in mind here are a collection of cabaret show reviews going back to the start of a very harsh winter.

The 7th Season of The Parks Concert Series, (formerly The Concert for City Greens), a free outdoor concert series, commences on Wednesday, May 28 at 6:30 pm (Rain date: Thursday, May 29 at 6:30pm.) at Tudor City Greens, and will feature professional performers from Broadway and the New York City cabaret, jazz, classical and opera scene. All performers donate their time and talent for these concerts, which are hosted by Tudor City resident and Broadway and cabaret veteran Raissa Katona Bennett.

Ageless 86-year-old cabaret superstar and living legend Marilyn Maye performed her second show of yet another run at 54 Below (which continues May 9 and 10 at 8:00 pm, and May 13 at 7:00 pm), this time built around a tribute to the iconic comedian and talk show host Johnny Carson whose pet name for Maye was 'Super Singer.' Maye appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 76 times, more than any other singer.

Scott Siegel is two-for-two. The diminutive and indefatigable nightlife/cabaret impresario of such productions as Broadway By the Year and the Nightlife Awards at Town Hall, as well as regular variety shows like Broadway Unplugged and Broadway Ballyhoo, last fall decided to give the already skyrocketing cabaret career of Georgia-born southern belle Carole J. Bufford a booster shot when he became the producer, director, and co-creator of Bufford's latest effort, Body and Soul (which this Thursday night at 9:30 begins a weekly run at the Metropolitan Room). Siegel didn't waste much time finding another promising female singer to champion, producing and directing six new shows (on Wednesdays and Sundays between April 27 and May 14 at 7pm) featuring a lovely soprano who is also from the south—the south of Ireland, that is. Thirteen years ago, recently minted American citizen Maxine Linehan was just another starry-eyed singer/actress who traveled to New York City with dreams of a musical theater career. Today, if her May 4 performance at the Terminus Recording Studios is any indication, Siegel has another budding star on his performer roster.

I was just a little more than a year into my new side career as a cabaret show reviewer when I first saw a Karen Oberlin show. It was Valentine's Day night 2012 and Oberlin—with guitarist Sean Harkness and guest violinist Aaron Weinstein—would be performing her romance-laced set, Stringing Along With Love, at the Metropolitan Room. At the time, all I knew about Oberlin was that she was considered among New York's best female cabaret singers, and I hadn't researched her performing history pre-show. About a third of the way into her set I leaned over to my wife (it was Valentine's Day after all) and whispered, “You know, she has a real Doris Day quality in her voice and in the way she delivers some lyrics.” This immediately ratcheted up my appreciation for Oberlin since there are four passions I inherited from my Dad—baseball, reading the morning papers, sports writing and Doris Day (well, also Sophia Loren, but that's for another column). Since Dad had grown up during the prime of the Big Band Era of the 1940s, I heard the sultry sounds of a young Doris Day singing songs like “Sentimental Journey” on the family stereo more than a few times. Once I saw Day's strikingly adorable blondness on a record cover and her rocking body in one of her films, I knew what Dad was talking about. As popular, famous, and near iconic as Doris Day became, in my book, as a singer and screen beauty she's always been vastly underrated. Little did I know that Karen Oberlin had been doing a Doris Day tribute show so since 2001 at places like Firebird, Iridium, and the late Danny's Skylight Room, and produced a CD, Secret Love: The Music of Doris Day, in 2002. Karen Oberlin had instantly become my secret love.

When Mark Nadler last performed a solo show at 54 Below, it was a very personal musical exploration of Germany's Weimar Republic of the 1920s, a place and an atmosphere that was dark, dangerous and decadent. I'm a Stranger Here Myself was such a compelling tour de force that it was expanded into a highly praised off-Broadway piece that Nadler staged at the York Theatre last Spring. Nadler's new 54 Below effort, Runnin' Wild: Songs & Scandals of the Roaring Twenties, (which opened last Sunday, ran last night, and will also play on May 7 at 9:30pm and May 14 at 7pm) is like a playful and debauched sequel to Stranger, only in this show—which would be more aptly titled “Reckless Abandon”--Nadler is clearly a gleeful member of the club. To this passionate piano man, America's big cities in the pre-Depression era 1920s were happy, hungry, and hedonistic. There was always a party filled with sex, drugs and booze looking for a place to happen. And goodness knows, Mark Nadler wishes he'd been invited to every one of them. But since he was born too late, all he can do is serve as congenial host in re-creating the speakeasy ambiance and in this show he manages to accomplish that--only without the sex and drugs. Damn!

After her passionate, pulsating and highly praised Spring 2013 show The Sound of Blue, at Iridium Jazz Club, a prominent cabaret critic called Billie Williams, "An emotionally resonant vocalist . . . pithy, powerful, and sure of the terrain. She GIVES a performance." Now a year later--on May 25 at 7:30 pm--Billie Williams makes her debut at New York City's Joe's Pub in a show celebrating the release of her new original single Lonely Night in Harlem, a song inspired by life in her long-time Harlem neighborhood. Billie's concert will also feature other new original songs and she'll be supported by an amazing group of seasoned Blues and R&B professionals, including Stew Cutler: guitar; Double-Z: bass; Tony Allen: drums; Ron Thompson: keyboards; Birch Johnson: trombone; Charlie Lagond: sax; and Marty Bound: trumpet.

I'll drink what he's drinking. Because given the youthful aura and energy 75-year-old Broadway legend and nine-time Tony Award winner Tommy Tune displayed on Tuesday during the opening night of his debut run at the Cafe Carlyle (Really? After 55 successful years in the biz?), he must be knocking back martinis from the fountain of youth. In his aptly-named new show, More Taps, Tunes and Tall Tales, the 6-foot-6 entertainer (whom Fred Astaire acknowledged at their first meeting in the early 1980s by saying 'You're one tall son of a bitch') danced, sang, and, like a seasoned raconteur, regaled his audience with anecdotes about his colorful career, doing it all with the boyish charm he must have possessed when as a kid growing up in Texas he dreamed about being on Broadway.

It took Lucie Arnaz her entire professional life to get booked for a solo nightclub/cabaret show at the Cafe Carlyle. It turned out to be worth the wait-for herself and her audiences-and her weeklong run at the stylish club (that began on April 13 and ends with shows tonight at 8:45 and 10:45) would no doubt have made her famous parents--Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz--beam with pride. Lucy might have erupted into a joyful crying jag, while Desi would have kvelled in his signature rapid-fired Spanish because when it comes to her performance on a cabaret stage, Lucie Arnaz doesn't 'got some 'splaining to do.'

As a young veteran of the New York cabaret scene and someone who rests comfortably in that performer's purgatory between celebrity and what the folks at the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs (MAC) calls “Major Artist,” Marieann Meringolo certainly doesn't need validation from a Stevie-come-lately reviewer like me. But nobody bats 1.000—in baseball, life, or cabaret—and, frankly, I didn't cheer in print for her slightly pretentious 2013 show Orchestrated, which seemed to feature a band big enough to bust through the far wall of the Metropolitan Room and arrangements that were more than a tad overblown. But in 2011, I loved her annual holiday show, In The Spirit, and had heard nothing but great things about her 2012 tribute to the music of Michael Legrand, so I was willing to consider Orchestrated a mere hiccup—depending on what she came up with next. Well, next arrived on the afternoon of Saturday, April 5 afternoon with Meringolo's new show, Crazy Love, at the Metropolitan Room.

What happens when a composer and a lyricist have to write a song from a new musical (invented on the spot), in a style determined by the spin of the dreaded Genre Wheel . . . in 20 minutes? Brainfrying fun! Brave musical theater composers and lyricists David Ingber, Erin Hill, Jack Lechner, James Harvey, Kristin Bair and Rosemary Loar will step up to the songwriting plate on April 14 at 7pm at Stage 72 (The Triad).

What happens when a composer and a lyricist have to write a song from a new musical (invented on the spot), in a style determined by the spin of the dreaded Genre Wheel . . . in 20 minutes? Brain-frying fun! Brave musical theater composers and lyricists Kevin Ray, Arianna Rose, Dan Wolpow, Adam Spiegel, Andy Roninson, and Drew Fornarola will step up to the creative plate in the April 7 premiere of the exciting new songwriting competition TUNE IN TIME at Stage 72 (formerly The Triad) at 7pm. The finals will be on April 14 at 7pm.

In the late '70s, Vivian Reed captured a Tony Award nomination and won a Drama Desk Award for her work in the Broadway musical Bubbling Brown Sugar, and although Reed has delivered some critically-acclaimed work in the many years since (a Tony nomination for the 1992 musical The High Rollers Social and Pleasure Club and a star turn in the revue Three Mo' Divas), during the last decade she had gone and stayed away too long, mainly to take care of her ailing mother. Last November, she dipped a toe in the New York nightclub waters, producing a one-night show at 54 Below that was highly praised and offered hints of great things to come. But this past Monday night—the first of what will ultimately be a four-show run of “An Evening With Vivian Reed” (the next three dates are April 14, May 20 and June 19)—this performing powerhouse established her return in earnest. With Reed's still expressive voice tackling musical genres ranging from R & B to Jazz to Great American Songbook standards to Gospel (even a dash of Opera), her electric and passionate show was cabaret/nightclub performing as revival meeting in more ways than one. Reed is not only reviving her singing career, she is inspiring impassioned converts at the same time.

'A man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?' once wrote the poet Robert Browning. The line is about setting goals, striving, and ambition, all of which can be commendable desires. But sometimes in the world of cabaret, the desire to achieve the next level or to raise one's personal bar can be an overreach and overly ambitious. Such was the case with two shows staged this past week by two accomplished singers-Shana Farr and Jillian Laurain--who over the past couple of years have garnered mucho kudos for their vocal prowess and solid shows. Nobody could fault these lovely ladies for pushing their performance envelopes, but in both cases they fell short of their goals.

Sometimes you can stumble into stirring, soul-enriching cabaret in the unlikeliest places. Like at an Episcopal Church in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, for example. On March 1 at Christ Church (Ridge Boulevard between 73rd and 74th Streets), one of New York cabaret's best and most-respected female singers Julie Reyburn, and her Musical Director Mark Janas (producer of the award-winning SALON, the open-mic held on Sunday nights at Manhattan's Etcetera, Etcetera Restaurant), resurrected Fate Is Kind, Reyburn's 2000 debut cabaret show, which earned her MAC and Bistro awards for “Best Female Debut,' and which is a magical work of cabaret art.

If you do believe in spooks, to paraphrase the character actor Burt Lahr as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz, then you'd probably gather that the spirits of our dear departed greats of Broadway are likely denizens of the theaters where they achieved their greatest successes, perhaps at the Neil Simon Theatre (formerly The Alvin), for example. But if the late, great character actors of 20th century musical theater are haunting any house these days it is most definitely the intimate and quaint theater space at Urban Stages on West 30th Street. This is where veteran actor/singer Jim Brochu has just started his run (until March 30) as a magical musical medium in a nightly one-man-show-as-seance that conjures these performing poltergeists, who are assuredly more Beetlejuice than Jacob Marley.

Barb Jungr has been called the UK's finest interpreter of song, especially the songs of singer/songwriting icons Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Jungr has also taken the New York cabaret scene by storm the last few years, having performed her celebrated Dylan tribute show, Man In the Long Black Coat (also available as a CD and called "the most significant vocal album of the 21st century thus far," by the Wall Street Journal) at the Metropolitan Room in 2011 and 2012. Now, Barb Jungr returns to the songs of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen with the release on March 24 of her new CD, Hard Rain (from Kristalyn Records and distributed by Absolute via Universal), which will also be available for download.

This past Tuesday evening Maude Maggart, a celebrated young veteran of the cabaret scene, started her debut run at the Cafe Carlyle (which ends tonight with shows at 8:45 pm and 10:45 pm) and her new show certainly didn't disappoint, at least not in the singing department. Throughout a 16-song set, this attractive and willowy brunette from a performing family that now spans three generations was a delightfully dreamy enchantress conveying retro-romantic songs she delivered with the ethereal mezzo soprano style of an early Disney movie heroine of pre-Little Mermaid vintage, only one more worldly wise and seductive.

On Sunday February 23 at Joe's Pub, BroadwayWorld.com celebrated the best New York cabaret performers, performances and shows during 2013 as voted on by more than 7,500 fans at the end of last year. With BroadwayWorld's lead New York cabaret columnist and reviewer Stephen Hanks as the host, many of the Award winners appeared to perform, and as you'll see in these videos they put on an amazingly entertaining show.