Club Review: Ann Morrison’s “Merrily from Center Stage”

Gerry Geddes
Anyone who has seen the 2016 documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened might understandably assume that there was no need to get further insight into the famed failure that was Merrily We Roll Along. Anyone who has seen an autobiographical cabaret show by a Broadway performer might understandably assume that a show by one...

“Bennett & Barton: Swing Out Under the Moon!”

Gerry Geddes
If the Bistro Awards gave out an award for Outstanding Musical Archeologist, Elena Bennett would win hands down for her triumphant return to the New York cabaret stage with Fred Barton in Bennett & Barton: Swing Out Under the Moon! which recently debuted at Pangea.  In an evening filled with classics (in quality if not...

Book Review: In “Shy,” the Late Mary Rodgers Settles Some Musical Scores

Mark Dundas Wood
Showing up in bookstores and online this week is the posthumously published Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022), written in tandem with the still-very-much-alive Jesse Green, chief theatre critic for The New York Times. Although we’re already well into August, there’s still time for those who like a...

Club Review: Helane Blumfield and Bobby Peaco in “Me and Bobby P”

Gerry Geddes
Bobby Peaco was one of the stalwarts of New York piano bars and cabaret for decades.  His talent, wit and antic spirit livened up many of the city’s classic venues until a few years ago when he decided to move to Florida with his husband.  He made a rare and welcome return to the cabaret...

Club Review: Josephine Sanges’s “The Funny Girl in Me”

Penelope Thomas
In cabaret, the overall quality of a performer is often much more important than the beauty of a voice—or even the skill of a vocalist; I’ve gradually been won over to the side of acting choices. But Josephine Sanges’s sound stopped me in my tracks. She has the bright ping-ring quality of Streisand in her...

CD Review: Allen Austin-Bishop’s “Why Go?”

Gerry Geddes
It is always exciting to come across a new recording that is filled with surprising song choices from surprising sources delivered by a singer who covers them with a passion, intelligence and the personal phrasing of a singer-songwriter delivering his own material.  That is what I discovered in Why Go?, the new release by Allen...

Club Review: Mary Foster Conklin and Andrea Wolper

Gerry Geddes
Pangea Hot Summer Jazz Series, curated and hosted by singer Ben Cassara, continues apace with the inspired pairing of Mary Foster Conklin and Andrea Wolper.  The friends shared the vocalist chair in Art Lillard’s Heavenly Big Band for many years, but this was their first duo show. I wish that the well-programmed show had included a...

Club Review: “Broadway’s Next Hit Musical”

Penelope Thomas
You know that gothic musical, Haunted Garden, and its brooding lament that’s been done to death: The Pavement Grows Flowers While Our Garden Is Empty? It’s a chestnut in the American Songbook.  Cue record scratch. Um—no, you don’t know it. It’s never been heard before and you’ll never hear it again—it existed in an instant...

Club Review: Erik Leuthäuser’s “In the Land of Ronny Whyte”

Gerry Geddes
Erik Leuthäuser Berlin-based jazz singer/composer Erik Leuthäuser made his American debut recently at Pangea as he celebrated the forthcoming release of a new tribute album to New York music legend Ronny Whyte, with Whyte himself as a special guest.  Multi-tattooed Leuthäuser has a goth, gender-fluid look and wardrobe that make his...

Club Review: Zachary Clause’s “On a Beach”

Gerry Geddes
Zachary Clause In the new show, On a Beach, written and performed by Zachary Clause, the singer/actor presented a kaleidoscopic journey through beaches, Hollywood, gay life, the Great American Songbook, mortality, history, survival, therapy, air travel, age, and his own past and present. He established a beachhead of sorts on the...