Club Review: Scott F. Mason’s “One Dame Funny Night”

Gerry Geddes
Before I get to Scott F. Mason’s hilarious show at Don’t Tell Mama, One Dame Funny Night, return with me to those thrilling days of cabaret past, and to one of the best cabaret comedians in the late 20th century, Pudgy (the stage name of Beverly Wines).  Pudgy began her career at a time when...

Cabaret Setlist: “Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries” – Music by Ray Henderson, Lyrics by Lew Brown

Mark Dundas Wood
Repertoire for the Once and Future American Songbook Article #23 in this ongoing series. When times get tough, people look for escape routes, right? Think of those 1930s Warner Bros. movies with their intrepid gold diggers and elaborate Busby Berkeley production numbers. Those films have long been cited as vehicles that helped people forget their...

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...