CABARET THEATER REVIEWS

Last Saturday night at the Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center presented a celebration on what would have been Ray Charles' 85th Birthday. The program was led by Musical Director and trumpeter Kenny Rampton (who once toured with the Ray Charles band), and included 10 longtime members of the icon's ...

In its robust 101st season, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene is the longest consecutively producing Yiddish theater company in the world. Its mission: To celebrate the Jewish experience through the performing arts and to transmit rich cultural legacy in exciting new ways. The theatre's Gala 2016 ...

On Thursday May 19 consummate singer Pat Whiteman presented An Evening of Pat Whiteman & Grammy nominated songwriter Harriet Schock at the E Spot Lounge at Vitello's in Studio City to a sold-out house of arduous music lovers. Although not as well known as the others, Harriet Schock has been co...

We are lucky in New York City. The talent here is unbelievable. Sometimes you settle in for an intimate evening at a little local club and you get your socks blown off. On Friday the 13th (of May, to be exact), I had such an experience at the latest monthly installment of Stephen Hanks' Metropolitan...

“I . . . am a survivor,” Lisa Jason announces solemnly near the beginning of her poignant new cabaret show, Bullied to Beautiful, which premiered in its present incarnation last Wednesday night (it originally debuted last October at the Metropolitan Room) at the Laurie Beechman Theatre. Uprooted...

The spirit of jazz legends Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald (with a little Tito Puente) was palpable in the Milton Berle room at New York's Friars Club on April 25 for the second-annual production of Triple Threats. Broadway veterans (including Duke's granddaughter, Mercedes Ellington, who also co...

I don't know when Ann Hampton Callaway started this chapter of her life, but she's emphatically in a new one. The artist savors every note, propelled headlong into her songs with uncommon exuberance. Signature authority extends not only to stellar scat but to enacting selected material. Accompanied ...

During a 2014 private tour of the massive Rainbow Room renovation still underway before its early October opening that year, architect Michael Gabellini famously told guests, “The idea is to burnish history, to polish and move it into the present day, with an eye on the future.” Undertaken in 20...

The twilight view of Central Park in all its springtime lushness set a perfect mood for Lynda Carter's show Long Legged Woman last Saturday night (April 23) at the Appel Room, which ran for two nights as part of the Jazz at Lincoln Center series. With her all-star Nashville crew, whose members have ...

'In his world, I find myself,' Raquel Cion pronounces with almost oracular force in her one-woman show, Me & Mr. Jones: My Intimate Relationship with David Bowie (performed on April 21 at The Slipper Room on the Lower East Side). The Connecticut-raised performer and director received a 2015 Broadway...

Ninety percent of the way through her new 54 Below show, A Visit With Kander and Ebb, Donna McKechnie delivers the unquestioned highlight of this show, “I Walk Away” (The Visit), wherein the character Claire Zachanassian ruefully explains how she accrued her fortune through the deaths of success...

When Tuesday night the formidable Chita Rivera opens her debut Cafe Carlyle show, An Evening of My Favorite Songs, with "I Won't Dance" (Jerome Kern/Dorothy Fields/Jimmy McHugh), it's like watching a thoroughbred nose the racing gate. There's too little space on the small stage to do much more than ...

I hear music, mighty fine music . . . Host Michael Feinstein sings with pristine bass accompaniment, as Musical Director Tedd Firth's Big Band filters in musician by musician. The sweetest sounds I ever heard . . . he continues as a light saxophone joins syncopated rhythm. Then whomp! All 17 players...

I didn't catch Rosemary Loar's original 2006 presentation of 'Quando Swing,' but I can't imagine it performed with more muscular honesty than it was Wednesday night at the Metropolitan Room in the latest monthly installment of Producer Stephen Hanks' 'New York Cabaret's Greatest Hits' series. We've ...

Actress/singer Rumer Willis returns to New York City with her spellbinding debut at Cafe Carlyle. Having previously wowed New York audiences as Roxie in Broadway's CHICAGO and at Feinstein's/54 Below, Willis' sultry instrument and chanteuse aura melds her youthful energy with the reverence for music...

Raising the bar ever higher, Celia Berk (who in the past year has won “Best Debut” Awards from BroadwayWorld and MAC and received a Bistro Award) celebrated the release of her new CD Manhattan Serenade with the first of four shows at The Metropolitan Room on Sunday night (others are April 10, 17...

There are audible sighs of pleasurable recognition from the audience at the Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse at Lincoln Center (on March 30) when Liz Callaway's band plays opening bars from "The Story Goes On" (Baby)." Songwriting partners Richard Maltby & David Shire have been "in" Liz Callaway's life...

On the evening of March 21, veteran vocalist and stage actress Anna Bergman presented a program called Falling In Love With Love, featuring the romantic songs of Richard Rodgers to support the Actors' Temple (339 West 47th Street) at its 3rd Annual Fundraising Gala, one year shy of Congregation Ezra...

"I'm a black woman in America; breathing is political," stated Natalie Douglas, wryly, early in her March 21 concert at Birdland to celebrate the release of her excellent new recording Human Heart. I felt myself inwardly fist pump-yes! Douglas dared to acknowledge the contemporary political circus-w...

There's something to be said about Ms. Ruffelle embracing her own originality and zest for life, and selecting songs that emphasize she's very much her own person and does things her own way. Her cabaret was unlike any other you'd experience from most of the women who have graced the Broadway or We...

Having recently added a 2016 Bistro Award for “Commanding Cabaret Artistry” to her list of accolades (including a Tony nomination and Theater World Award for her 1989 Broadway debut in Starmites), Sharon McNight belted and growled her way through Songs to Offend Almost Everyone at the second of ...

Every time I attend something in jazz pianist Ronny Whyte's estimable weekly series at the welcoming, modern Saint Peter's Church (619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street), I'm glad I came. The place is airy, peaceful, and sunny with spacious pew and tiered seating. Acoustics are splendid. The audience ...

Veteran cabaret performer Richard Holbrook peppers his show, 'Sings Richard Rodgers With a Lot of Hart' (at the Metropolitan Room this past Monday night) with facts about Rodgers' life and career. It's obvious the performer feels strongly about his subject's work. Unfortunately, the same energy, vol...

Bar Thalia, a narrow, uber-casual bar/café adjacent to the Upper West Side arts hub Symphony Space, has become the musical pied-à-terre of vocalist Marcus Goldhaber. Each first Sunday of the month, the artist presents two loosey-goosey acoustic sets with a guest singer and guitarist. The past Sun...

In her new show, Café Society at Feinstein's/54 Below, Christine Andreas doesn't so much sing “Puttin' On the Ritz” (Irving Berlin) as personify it, channeling the attitude and era in which it was conceived. With just a tad of hip action, tipping shoulders, and an elongated ssss, the artist sha...