Joseph Keckler

Mark Dundas Wood
Some cabaret performers are born entertainers—there to give the audience a good time. Some are interested in educating their listeners or rousing them politically, while others are adept at moving people emotionally. Then there's Joseph Keckler, who takes his listeners on rollicking adventures. You never quite know where he'll lead you after you turn that...

Hannah Reimann

Gerry Geddes
At Pangea recently, singer-instrumentalist Hannah Reimann reveled in her love of all things Joni in her show, Both Sides Now – The Music of Joni Mitchell 1966-1974. As the title indicates, she focused on the songwriter's first six albums; this was a wise choice since those recordings contain most of her "hits" and her most accessible,...

Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz

Mark Dundas Wood
Audiences seem to enjoy theatrical "back-stagers" featuring estranged couples in the entertainment world who squabble their way to a happy denouement. Think of the scrumptious love-hate relationship between Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham in Kiss Me, Kate or the similarly tasty one between Lili Garland and Oscar Jaffee in On the Twentieth Century. Now, performers...

Luba Mason

Robert Windeler
Although, by her own reckoning, she's been a professional singer since 1987, Luba Mason postponed performing her first fully autobiographical cabaret show until Luba Mason – 5'10", her recent outing at The Green Room 42. From an audience point of view, it was well worth the wait. Apart from the expected (and delivered) powerful and wide-ranging...

Joanna Gleason

Gerry Geddes
Whenever students or singers that I'm directing adopt a personal-confession format for their performance, I am quick to point out that while there should be truth on stage, there don't necessarily have to be facts. The best singers allow the audience to experience their own moments of joy, grief, or passion through the storytelling of...

Carol McCann

Gerry Geddes
Singer Carol McCann described the theme of her new show, Music Lessons (recently seen at Pangea in an encore performance), as a collection of songs from which she has learned something. It's a simple concept, made all the more simple because she never really delved into the interesting possibilities that the title evoked. It became,...

Joanne Halev

Mark Dundas Wood
For her show Like a Perfumed Woman (directed by Lina Koutrakos), recently at Birdland Theater, Joanne Halev drew on her career experience in the world of "fragrance creation." (For years, she traveled the globe in search of exotic and intoxicating scents.) She had fun with the "fragrance" motif, noting that songs and fragrances alike are...

Andrea McArdle

Robert Windeler
Nostalgia can cover a multitude of sins or situations. Even better if the nostalgia is shared. In the case of Andrea McArdle's recent new show at Feinstein's/54 Below, the happy remembrance of things past was needed to leaven only one ongoing hiccup. And this particular glitch her audience's group nostalgia overcame very nicely indeed. "I'm...

Corinna Sowers Adler

Robert Windeler
Somewhat as a sequel to Stories, her New York cabaret debut nearly a decade ago, Corinna Sowers Adler recently offered Second Stories at the Triad Theater. But this stunning, hour-long set proved to be so much more than a mere follow-up to a prior clutch of story songs. This time out, in a wide-ranging selection...

Steve Dorff

Gerry Geddes
There is a particular pleasure to be had in listening to good pop songs sung by their creators. Whether it's Jimmy Webb or Sheldon Harnick or Paul Williams or Harold Arlen, there's a palpable connection to the material, obviously, but there's also a more gentle, conversational delivery of both lyric and melody that sets each...