Articles by this Author:
Bazazz! A Sequined Variety
I'm glad to have lived through the 1960s and 1970s, when prime time TV variety shows—inspired by British music hall and American vaudeville entertainments—were most in vogue. And I'm sorry...
Amy Wolk
The first music we hear in Amy Wolk's new Duplex show is a snippet of the "Love Is All Around" theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The singer arrives...
Leslie Carrara-Rudolph
I'll never forget the day my brother and I were spurned by Wunda Wunda. The TV story lady of the Pacific Northwest was a tall, stately yet somehow dainty clown...
Gabrielle Stravelli
In her recent one-off at Birdland, City Girl, Country Boy: Gabrielle Stravelli Sings Willie Nelson, the singer put a guitar-free jazz spin on some of the country legend's biggest hits—his...
Norbert Leo Butz
As a leading man in musicals, two-time Tony Award recipient Norbert Leo Butz has been very much a creature of his own era. He has appeared in six Broadway musicals...
Ruby Manger Live! The Farewell Engagement
The vanity, self-indulgence and capacity for delusion among show-business divas—male and female alike—have been satirized regularly over the decades. So there is nothing especially boundary-breaking about Julia Mattison's Ruby Manger...
Villain: DeBlanks
In the 1950s, Leonard B. Stern and Roger Price—a pair of TV comedy writers—invented Mad Libs, the comedic word game in which certain nouns, verbs and adjectives in a story...
Analisa Bell
Australian-born performer Analisa Bell was originally set to perform Off the Rails—her Duplex show about the blessings (few) and banes (innumerable) of the New York City subway system—back in June....
Byron St. Cyr
Byron St. Cyr stepped onstage for his recent Don't Tell Mama show (directed by Jim Brigman) looking spiffy in jacket and tie. Well, sort of. The tie he wore was actually...
Matt Wolfe and Lainie Munro
The jazz world has long looked to Broadway for melodic fodder. Jazz singers have forever riffed on musical lines from the likes of Cole Porter and Rodgers & Hart. And that...