Charlotte Patton has been married and not. She's had serious relationships, flings, and romances with men of all ages (but mostly younger). She's experienced all the charms, foibles, and idiosyncrasies of the opposite sex--and loves them anyway. Now the actress and comedian will bring all of that worldly wisdom to her sensual, provocative, and playful new cabaret show . . . 'Celebrating Men (Bless Their Hearts),' opening at New York's Metropolitan Room (34 West 22nd Street) tonight, May 28 at 9:30 pm. Patton's show is Directed by Award-winning cabaret performer Karen Oberlin with Musical Direction by MAC Award winner Barry Levitt. Recent MAC Award winner Tom Hubbard is on bass. Peter Napolitano contributes as Creative Consultant.
Stephen Hanks, Producer of Cabaret Life Productions, and Union Temple of Brooklyn (17 Eastern Parkway) are proud to announce that Musical Director/Pianist Jon Weber will perform his critically acclaimed show, From Joplin to Jarrett: 100 Years of Piano Jazz, at Union Temple on June 19 at 8 pm. The one-man concert will be in the 3rd Floor Social Hall at 8 pm after the 6:30 pm Shabbat Service and dinner. Admission to the concert is FREE.
Since BroadwayWorld.com launched its New York Cabaret Awards in 2012, the process of voting on preliminary nominees and final nominees for recognition in approximately 20 categories has been open to anyone registering to vote on the highly-trafficked entertainment website. For it's 4th Annual Cabaret Awards nomination period—this year beginning after Thanksgiving 2015--BroadwayWorld will now put the nomination process into the hands of its cabaret show reviewing staff (Alix Cohen, David Clarke, John Hoglund, Andrew Martin, Billie Roe, and Remy Block) and select industry experts, led by BWW Cabaret Editor and Awards Show Producer Stephen Hanks (who has also hosted the show since its inception). Once the final nominees are announced, the general public will again be offered the chance to vote online for the best performers and shows of the past year.
In November 2014, singer/songwriter Rembert (Remy) Block staged three performances of her cabaret show tribute to Joni Mitchell—On a Lonely Road . . . Travelin' With Joni—at New York's iconic club, Don't Tell Mama. Joined again by her Musical Director Gregory Toroian on piano and her Director Raquel Cion, Remy Block is bringing back her highly praised show, this time to the Duplex Cabaret Theater on June 10 at 7 pm. The Duplex is at: 61 Christopher Street (at 7th Avenue). For reservations, call 212-255-5438.
Charlotte Patton has been married and not. She's had serious relationships, flings, and romances with men of all ages (but mostly younger). She's experienced all the charms, foibles, and idiosyncrasies of the opposite sex--and loves them anyway. Now the actress and comedian will bring all of that worldly wisdom to her sensual, provocative, and playful new cabaret show . . . 'Celebrating Men (Bless Their Hearts),' opening at New York's Metropolitan Room (34 West 22nd Street) on May 28 at 9:30 pm. Patton's show is Directed by Award-winning cabaret performer Karen Oberlin with Musical Direction by MAC Award winner Barry Levitt. Recent MAC Award winner Tom Hubbard is on bass. Peter Napolitano contributes as Creative Consultant.
In a two-reviews-in-one column critiquing shows from last March, my esteemed editor, Stephen Hanks quoted the poet Robert Browning: “A man's reach should exceed his grasp. Or what's a heaven for?” Hanks pointed out that Browning's famous line is about setting goals, striving, and ambition, all of which are commendable desires. But, alas, in this particular review he felt the two singers in question “fell short.” One of those singers was Shana Farr and the show she has been performing throughout the past year, In The Still of the Night: Music of Noel Coward and Cole Porter. So here we are a year later, immersed in the revelry of the 2015 award season celebrating excellence in cabaret, and Farr's uniquely theatrical homage to Coward and Porter has recently won her the 2015 Bistro Award for “Outstanding Concept Show.” In spite of my editor's previous reservations about this show, he was open to hearing another perspective—whether positive or negative—so off to the Laurie Beechman Theatre I ventured on the last day of February to find out for myself whether Shana's show was truly award-worthy. Sorry, oh editor of mine, but you might have missed the boat on this one.
In 2015, the CabaretFest in Provincetown (MA), one of America's biggest Cabaret events, is returning to its roots. After a one-year layoff, this weekend extravaganza of song that began in 1999 under the guidance of actor and cabaret performer John O'Neil, will be back this June (4-7) bigger and better than ever. Singer and Cape Cod resident Patricia Fitzpatrick and Ambassador Productions has recruited O'Neil to help re-launch the event in its original format-only longer. CabaretFest 2015 Provincetown weekend will be jammed-packed with activities and shows that Fitzpatrick says, 'Promise to be educational, entertaining, and fun, and all will celebrate 'The Art of Cabaret!'
In just three years since the inception of the BroadwayWorld New York Cabaret Awards, the ceremony has evolved into one of the community's most-anticipated events. And this year's festivities, the second one at Joe's Pub, proved to be the most glittering and energetic assemblage to date. In fact, there couldn't have been a more promising start to the annual cabaret awards season, which continues with the Bistro Awards at Gotham Comedy Club on March 4, and culminates with the MAC Awards (Manhattan Association of Cabarets & Clubs) at BB King's on March 26. The 3rd Annual BWW Awards Show was just the right spark to get this season's prizes off to a veritable fireworks display.
The 2014 BWW New York Cabaret Awards will celebrate the best cabaret performers and shows of last year as voted on by 7,500 fans in December after a one-month preliminary ballot process. Produced, directed, and hosted for the third straight year by BWW Cabaret Editor Stephen Hanks, the BWW Awards show will feature performances by many of the winners, many of whom are among the cream of the crop in the art of cabaret. Joining a star-studded cast (see below) will be two-time 2014 BWW Cabaret Award nominee and Broadway Musical star Len Cariou, who will perform a special tribute to the late songwriter Ervin Drake.
Pamela Lewis (a.k.a. Champagne Pam), the 2013 BroadwayWorld New York Cabaret Award winner for "Best Female Vocalist" (for her show Daddy's Little Girl), performed her new solo cabaret show, New York State of Mind: The Songs of Billy Joel, in front of a rowdy, revved-up, packed house at the Metropolitan Room on Friday and Saturday, January 16 and 17. The singer with champagne-colored streaks in her long brown hair, Lewis embodies cool. And hot. She's a brassy chick from Long Island who knows who she is and she wants to party with you. In this show, she celebrates her roots, singing the songs of another Long Islander she grew up loving, first for his tuneful pop melodies and later for his words. It's cool when a woman sings an entire show of songs written by a man, doesn't fear using the "wrong" pronouns, and puts her own spin on them by changing the feel, the tempo, and the arrangements. Pamela Lewis does all that with verve and then some in this show.
As the days dwindled down to a precious few in 2014, a few cabaret goers and performers in what is affectionately but also self-mockingly called the “cabaret community” would sidle up and ask if I was planning my annual end-of-the year “Best Of” column, similar to the “Top 20 Bests and Favorites” piece over the first half of the year I posted back in early July. I would respond in the negative with very reasonable and believable excuses, but the truth is I didn't want to reveal my “Bests” of the year until the voting for the 2014 BroadwayWorld New York Cabaret Awards had ended. There's enough baggage and backstage whispering that comes with administering the BWW Awards, so I wasn't about to publish any opinions that might influence the vote while it was in process. I may be crazy but I'm not masochistic. But now all bets are off. You want lists? I'll give you lists.
BroadwayWorld has called Ann Hampton Callaway the current “Queen of Cabaret” and apparently much of the cabaret audience agrees. The votes for the 2014 BroadwayWorld New York Cabaret Awards are official and Callaway is the “Performer of the Year,” having garnered 2,194 votes (the most of any nominee) out of the 66,179 votes cast by approximately 7,500 voters for 148 nominees in 17 categories. Here are your 2014 BWW New York Cabaret Award Winners.
With the official results of the voting for the 2014 BroadwayWorld Cabaret Awards to be revealed later this week, BWW and New York Cabaret Editor Stephen Hanks have announced this year's special “Editor's Awards” for special achievement in categories that were not subject to online voting. The winners will receive their Awards and most will perform at the 3rd Annual BroadwayWorld Cabaret Awards show on February 23 (6:30 pm) at Joe's Pub. Tickets are already on sale and can be purchased here.
"Mad About the Boy?!" The rabble-rousing thespian with get down dance moves, and elastic, back-trilled voice is going to sing Noel Coward? At 54 Below? Mea Culpa. Britain's Barb Jungr performs one of the most truthful renditions of the song perhaps any Coward purist has heard. Sure, it's prefaced by a sharp comic turn on aging, but the moment Jungr begins to confess, she's proud, eager, and though gimlet-eyed, ready to risk it all. " . . . Misery and joy, misery and joy, misery and joy," she repeats weighing probabilities in one hand, then the other. A muted, wah-wah scat sustains focus in tandem with Tracy Stark's age inappropriate, sashaying piano.
When Barb Jungr takes the stage tonight for her debut at 54 Below (she also be at the club tomorrow night and Sunday night; all shows at 7pm), the acclaimed British chanteuse will have conquered another major New York nightclub venue, having in past years performed critically acclaimed shows at the Café Carlyle, Joe's Pub, the Metropolitan Room. She even knocked them dead at the 59E59 theater twice in less than a year, with her show Dancing the Dark (read my review here) in December 2013 and Hard Rain (review here) this past November. While Jungr is still performing the latter--amazing interpretations of some of the most intensely political Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen songs—throughout Europe and has earned enormous praise for the CD of the same name, her 54 Below show, Mad About the Boy and No Regrets, will be an amalgam of Jungr's greatest hits from past shows and CD, plus some songs she'll be doing for the first time.
In my recent very extended assessment of cabaret shows I never reviewed during the second half of 2014, there were two significant omissions. I didn't leave these out of my critical mix because they weren't strikingly significant. In fact, it was just the opposite. The new variety game show, Tune In Time, which dubs itself the “Musical Theater Olympics,” and the musical theater piece/song cycle, New World Waking, were among the most original and entertaining productions I witnessed this year and deserved more of a feature treatment than a quickie review. My take on Tune In Time (which will begin a new monthly run at the York Theatre on January 5) should beat the clock before the next show. So by simple process of elimination, this commentary will be on New World Waking, which when performed on December 6 was one of the highlights of the recent annual 12-day, 20-show Winter Rhythms Festival at Urban Stages.
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.
With the end of the voting period for the 2014 BroadwayWorld New York Cabaret Awards just eight days away (voting will close at Noon on December 31, 2014), BroadwayWorld.com is pleased to announce that the 3rd Annual BWW NY Cabaret Awards Show will take place for the second successive year at Joe's Pub (The Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC) at 6:30 pm. Once again, this Award presenting extravaganza will feature performances by the Award winners (whose schedules make them available), and BWW's New York Cabaret Editor Stephen Hanks will once again host the festivities.
