Coming up this week, 54 BELOW, Broadway's Supper Club, presents some of the brightest stars from Broadway, cabaret, jazz and beyond. To purchase tickets or for more information, visit www.54Below.com or call (646) 476-3551.
It's not exactly a secret that cabaret has for decades been a world dominated by female entertainers. Sylvia Syms, Julie Wilson, Margaret Whiting, Karen Akers, KT Sullivan, Karen Mason and myriad others have assumed the top notches of the art form. But, perhaps, men might be taking their place among the front lines and a perfect example this past week were the shows from cabaret veterans Kevin Dozier and Frank Torren.
Monday night found me back at Zeb's on the West Side for another of Will Friedwald's iconoclastic 'Clip Joints'--this one in honor of the Billie Holiday Centennial. During a year that is already producing a glut of celebratory events (given that it's also the Frank Sinatra Centennial year), leave it to the intriguing and obsessive writer/journalist/producer to come up with something different. Instead of a roster of vocalists live or on film, performing material we now think of reflexively as belonging to Lady Day, we were offered the singular piano interpretations of Lara Downes, recollections by alto saxophonist Jerry Dodgion (who at age 22 played with Holiday), and eclectic clips from television and film appearances of the artist herself.
Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Today's big news: HAND TO GOD opens on Broadway, Anne Hathaway returns to the stage, DISENCHANTED! brings a twist to fairytale princesses off-Broadway and more!
Stage, screen, and cabaret star Julie Wilson passed away yesterday, April 5, from complications from two recent stokes. She was 90 years old. Below, BroadwayWorld takes you back through the last two decades of her versatile career.
As BroadwayWorld reported this morning, stage, screen, and cabaret star Julie Wilson passed away yesterday, April 5, from complications from two recent stokes. She was 90 years old. Rick McKay, the producer/director of Rick McKay's Broadway: The Golden Age Film Trilogy, recently took to Facebook to bid farewell to his friend:
BroadwayWorld has just learned that stage, screen, and cabaret star Julie Wilson passed away yesterday, April 5, from complications from two recent stokes. She was 90 years old. Wilson's friend Ann Hampton Callaway writes on Facebook:
This April and May, 54 BELOW presents an exciting lineup of the brightest talent from Broadway and beyond. Located just below the legendary Studio 54 at 254 West 54th Street.
This April and May, 54 BELOW presents an exciting lineup of the brightest talent from Broadway and beyond. Located just below the legendary Studio 54 at 254 West 54th Street.
54 Below, Broadway's Supper Club, presents the multi-award winning performer Jennifer Sheehan in "STARDUST: A Night in the Cosmos" -- a show that goes where no show has gone before, traversing a wide spectrum of great songs and stories that trace our life-long love affair with the magnificent and mysterious night sky!
Peter and Lily have a secret. They love Sonny & Cher, their favourite celebrity couple of all time. With a string of hits in the 1960s and a successful American variety TV show in the 1970s, Sonny and Cher were mismatched, they were camp, they were good honest fun.
Carole Demas, Broadway's original 'Sandy' in GREASE, has joined NiCori Studios and Productions and Irvington Town Hall Theater's fourth performance in the Cabaret on the Hudson series.
'Pompie's Place,' a unique pop-up blues supper-club is taking up residence at Don't Tell Mama, 343 West 46th Street, in April. Produced by Arthur Pomposello, "Pompie's Place" is an immersive nightclub experience transporting audiences to a mythic blues room of another time and place, in which the food is hot and the music even hotter!
Eric Comstock and Barbara Fasano exude warmth. Both superb musicians, they're polished without ostentation, symbiotic without deferring individual fortes, and infectiously (enviably) appreciative of one another without becoming saccharine. Original arrangements never trade lyrical meaning for novelty. Their recent one-night show at Birdland, Only In New York: A Big Apple Valentine, is a collection of songs in which the charming marrieds express the vicissitudes of love, bracketed by affection for the city. Many are sophisticated, some are unexpected, and all are empathetic.
Stars of Tron's 2014 panto Miracle On 34 Parnie Street Johnny McKnight and Julie Wilson Nimmo reunite this March in a edgy new comedy from the brilliant Random Accomplice Theatre Company, Horsecross Arts and the pen of Olivier award-winner Stef Smith-a story of sequins, survival and Sonny & Cher: And The Beat Goes On.
NiCori Studios and Productions and Irvington Town Hall Theater announce the third performance in the Cabaret on the Hudson series. The performance will be held on Monday, February 16 at 8pm. Cabaret on the Hudson is a series that features three outstanding cabaret performers or small groups, each bringing a 25 minute sampling of their New York City cabaret shows to Westchester, NY. Many of the performers are Broadway veterans and have performed in New York City venues such as 54 BELOW, the Oak Room at the Algonquin, Birdland, Feinstein's at Loews Regency, Iridium, the Metropolitan Room and Jazz at Lincoln Center to name a few. Cabaret on the Hudson will be hosted by multi-nominated Cabaret singer and host of the 'Music at the Mansion' series, Corinna Sowers Adler and will feature Benet Braun on piano.
After eight years of terrifically entertaining, monthly fundraisers at The Laurie Beechman Theater, Cabaret Cares/Help Is On The Way Today is on the move! The 501c non-profit organization that assists children and youth living with HIV/AIDS is relocating to new digs. The first event of 2015 will be held on January 25th at Metropolitan Room, where the charity's founder, Joseph Macchia, is the co-booking manager with owner Bernie Furshpan. Cabaret entertainer Gretchen Reinhagen will host "Lovely Ladies Of Cabaret" with Jennylind Parris, Karen Mason, Tracy Stark, and Joanna Morton Gary. Gretchen will also perform. Metropolitan Room is in the fashionable Flatiron District at 34 West 22nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues.
2013 MetroStar winner and Kansas native, Lauren Stanford, made her solo cabaret debut last summer with I'm a Stranger Here Myself. For one special encore performance, I'm a Stranger Here Myself will be presented on February 1st at 1:00pm at The Metropolitan Room. The show explores New York City's enduring lure through songs made popular by small town women such as Helen Morgan, Mary Martin, Julie Wilson, Peggy Lee and more. Directed by Eric Michael Gillett with Music Direction by Mike Pettry.
If you've been a regular reader of this particular reviewer's musings, you know that every year there are long stretches of time where I just haven't been able to critique all the shows I've seen that deserve commentary. So I end up playing what they call in sports, 'Catch-up ball,' and post a mash up of belated reviews from past shows. It's kind of like a critic's version of the song 'Six Months Out of Every Year,' from Damn Yankees. Give or take a month or two, that's usually the time period during which I store unpublished reviews in my fevered brain and then unload them all in one seemingly endless column-like this one is going to be. If my cabaret-show reviewing days will be over (as chronicled here), I might as well go out with a bang-and relieve my procrastination guilt during holiday season. Now I can scratch one New Year's resolution off the list.
Pioneer Theatre Company presents the Tony Award-winning play Peter and the Starcatcher tonight, December 5 through December 20, 2014.
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