CABARET THEATER REVIEWS

Alexis Cole makes it look easy. Even up-tempo, the performer never appears to be less than relaxed and enjoying what she's doing. Somewhere in the middle of her first number Saturday night at Café Noctambulo (at Pangea Restaurant on 2nd Avenue between 11th and 12th streets) the room seems to exhale...

Stacy Sullivan is a warm and amusing storyteller with an entertaining family history. The first six numbers of her new Metropolitan Room show on Thursday night, Since You Asked (after the Judy Collins song), are bridged by tales of her parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and her upbringing in...

With her new show at the Metropolitan Room that opened last night—Groupies: The Muses Behind the Legends of Rock & Roll--the usually smart and meticulous Lauren Fox (as evidenced by her shows that celebrated the music of Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen and later the Pop/Rock that emerged from Laur...

I like Megan Hilty because she laughs a lot. She's fun! A young star of stage and screen-- having established herself as "Glinda" in Wicked on Broadway (2005-06) and subsequently becoming a TV star playing complicated and talented Ivy Lynn in the NBC hit musical drama Smash-Hilty opened her current ...

One might easily call Susan Winter's Monday night show at Don't Tell Mama, A Woman for All Seasons: Part Two as half its numbers were in the first show by this name she performed during a run starting last September at the Metropolitan Room. Winter is the kind of class act that would've been lauded ...

Cy Coleman and Ira Gasman's musical The Life explores the human flotsam and jetsam of Times Square in the 1980s--prostitutes, pimps, dealers, runaways, the seedy, lost and desperate. And, of course, this being a musical, some have hearts of gold. The Life began Off-Broadway in 1990 at the Westbeth T...

To paraphrase a Peter Allen song, she could have been a sailor. Instead, she chose to sail the open seas. And now she's singing about it. It all made for a promising theme for the Manhattan cabaret debut of Robyn McCorquodale and her series of four April shows, Diary Of A Piano Girl, at the Laurie B...

Three of Cy Coleman's Broadway leading ladies invite you to a celebratory shindig buoyed by talent, palpably warmed by affection. Sometimes orchestrated as a harmonizing girl group and at others in distinctively different solo turns, Lillias White, Cady Huffman, and Randy Graff offer a banquet of Co...

Back by popular demand, March's SIDE SHOW: ADDED ATTRACTIONS concert returned to 54 Below this week. Packing in two more performances, the Monday evening show celebrated the short lived Broadway run of the revival of Side Show, the March concert, and the upcoming release of Broadway Records' SIDE SH...

Tribute shows to iconic entertainers celebrating a centennial birthday in 2015 seem to be all the rage this year. But nobody has been celebrated more in cabaret variety shows than Frank Sinatra—and rightly so. Wall Street Journal entertainment columnist Will Friedwald, also a producer and author w...

James Snyder got this week off to a great start when he brought James Snyder: Prince Charming to Birdland as part of the venue's ongoing Broadway at Birdland concert series. Existing partly as a way to promote the upcoming production of Ever After at Paper Mill Playhouse, this intimate cabaret conce...

Four recent shows at Don't Tell Mama featured performers either making their debuts on the New York cabaret scene (Evelyn Sullivan and Erin McCracken) or who returned this spring in hopeful anticipation of sharing their artistic vision with audiences (Rob Sutton and Eve Eaton). They no doubt experie...

Judy Collins, who celebrated her 76th birthday on May 1, has been entertaining us for 56 years "not including childhood." A formidable contributor to the soundtrack of Boomer lives, her transcendent voice conjures memories like few others of any generation. Collins' current show at Cafe Carlyle (whi...

After a 20-year absence from Manhattan cabaret, Roslyn Kind resurfaced last year with a sold out run at 54 Below. The show was a hit and audiences so adored her, she probably could have extended a month. At the time, she was fresh off a world tour that that began at Brooklyn's Barclays Center and fa...

Somewhere In This Song: The Music and Lyrics of Nicholas Levin, which premiered this past Saturday afternoon at Metropolitan Room is a hit show that will undoubtedly find its legs for a much-deserved extended run there, or possibly on an Off-Broadway stage. Levin, a prodigious songwriter, has never...

Kritzerland's Berlin to Rome's theme unintentionally became 'generations,' as the youngster and the senior stole the show from the others of the talented line-up of singing pros. ...

Evoking Rita Hayworth, a spot lit Jennifer Sheehan weaves through 54 Below towards the stage, long dark hair cascading above a body-skimming white gown replete with twinkling sequins. “I'll build a stairway to the stars . . .,” (Mitchell Parish/Matt Malneck/Frank Signorelli) she sings with stunn...

To celebrate the release of his debut solo album ALL THAT'S AHEAD, Brian Gallagher performed an intimate set in Birdland's ongoing Broadway at Birdland concert series on Monday, April 27. Joined by Megan Hilty, he and his robustly talented band brought music from the album to dazzling life. With exu...

It wasn't so much watching a performance as it was bearing witness to an interior exploration, the chrysalis-busting conjuring of an artist stepping out of the shadows to claim her own territory. Lisa Fischer, the extraordinarily gifted vocalist featured in the 2014 Academy Award-winning documentary...

Any seasoned entertainment pro will tell you that the key to success on a stage is keeping your audience happy. It also helps to throw in a bevy of show-stopping songs, parodies, and raucous tongue-in-cheek laughter along the way. Those make up only a few of the ingredients offered in the ongoing Ju...

These days at Birdland, trying to channel Dolly Parton's bigger-than-life-persona is the sultry Natalie Douglas, a seven-time MAC Award, Nightlife, and Backstage Bistro Award winner, who (on April 20) brought her own hip, quick-witted, earth-mother persona--along with her smokin' hot vocals--in a j...

Attending a multilingual performance at Cafe Sabarsky in The Neue Galerie (86th Street and Fifth Avenue) is like stepping back in time. The room speaks to an era of higher refinement, not stuffy, but encouraging pedigree and brio. Few artists epitomize this more than celebrated cabaret veteran singe...

Long after the Waldos coined the term '420,' composer Dan Studney, lyricist Kevin Murphy, and actor/producer Christian Campbell decided that it was time to test the waters in New York City for the return of the hit cult musical REEFER MADNESS. Lighting up at 54 Below, they wanted to see just how hig...

Nestled in the cozy, subterranean concert space that is Rockwood Music Hall Stage 3, Seth Glier celebrated the release of his latest album on Friday, April 17 in New York City. In the intimate venue, he treated the packed to capacity room of fans with charismatic performances of songs from previous ...

Migguel Anggelo's sophomore album, LA CASA AZUL, was released today by Jupiter Moons Productions, LLC. The beautiful album is rich in metaphor and poetry, weaving classical art sensibilities into the Latin pop mindset. With lush musicality, resplendent lyrics, and opulent vocals, LA CASA AZUL spring...