Reeve Carney

Gerry Geddes
Reeve Carney has enjoyed a number of successes both on television (in the series Penny Dreadful and in Fox's remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and on Broadway (with Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark and, currently, Hadestown). It is clear from his new show at The Green Room 42 that the first among his...

Eva Noblezada

Gerry Geddes
In her new show, Ballad of a Broadway Twenty-Something, Eva Noblezada gives us a glimpse into the wild ride she's been on since being cast (in her teens and still in high school) in Cameron Mackintosh's epic remounting of Miss Saigon in London. She went on to receive a Tony nomination for the role on...

Ali Levin: Melania’s Day Off

Mark Dundas Wood
"Have you ever been to hell?" asks Melania Trump (Ali Levin) early in Melania's Day Off, an ongoing show at The Duplex. "Because I live there." The premise of the show is that the third Mrs. Trump needs a break from the rigors of being First Lady and decides that the Duplex would be the...

Steve Grand

Mark Dundas Wood
Steve Grand—a singer and model from the Chicago area—writes and performs pop songs, some with a country edge, about being young and gay. He's attracted a following, in part because of the music videos that illustrate his recordings. He is especially known for his song "All-American Boy," which is about falling in love with a...

Christine Aziz

Robert Windeler
It's always encouraging to see a performer, too young to have personally experienced the subject of her tribute show, go to great lengths to impart to her audience a real-life sense of the honoree. The flip side of that cross-generational combination is, of course, that the distance between live artist and deceased subject can be...

Nancy McGraw

Robert Windeler
They were both born in Georgia. And as members of the Southern diaspora and living most of their lives elsewhere, Down Home was so often in their thoughts. He was Johnny Mercer, one of the preeminent lyricists of the mid-20th century American songbook. She is Nancy McCall McGraw, who recently chose Mercer as the subject...

The Drinkwater Brothers

Penelope Thomas
John and Matthew Drinkwater are twins—singing, football-playing twins, in their senior years at Wagner College. As I sat down to watch their recent show at Don't Tell Mama, I must admit I had a little trepidation that—with their being young, playing to a home crowd, and probably not thus-far knocked around by show business—I'd be...

Lynda Rodolitz

Robert Windeler
In the show she performed in 2016, Lynda Rodolitz declared, convincingly, that she was "Off Her Rocker." She underscores, maybe even expands, that comic assertion in her laugh-rich current show, Animal Magnetism (at Don't Tell Mama, directed by Lennie Watts). In this musically sophisticated outing, she purports to solicit dating advice from the animal kingdom—by...

Love Letters – Music of Thomas Hodges

Gerry Geddes
Back in the heyday of New York City cabaret (or at least back in one of the heydays of New York City cabaret) I can remember wandering into a club and hearing Marc Shaiman accompany André De Shields or Ellen Greene or Annie Golden. I would go to see a hot new singer like Annie Hughes...

Teresa Fischer

Mark Dundas Wood
In More Than You Know, her Rosemary Clooney tribute show at 53 Above, Teresa Fischer tells us that she has long been drawn to Clooney's singing because of the warmth and clarity of her voice and her ability to make every lyric understandable. Happily, Fisher is able to replicate those positive qualities herself. It's not...