Paula West

Penelope Thomas
When it comes to singers, do we have to choose between a musician and a storyteller? Any well-realized choice along the spectrum from pure music to pure theatre can work for a vocalist, and in the best singers, it's hard to tell where one stops and the other begins. Paula West is that kind of...

Dean Benner

Mark Dundas Wood
Here's a nice fantasy: the pop musical style known as "western swing" re-emerges as a major phenomenon and somehow brings together opposing camps in American culture: red states and blue, rust belt and borscht. OK, it's a long shot. I suppose there are some people who don't care for this hybrid of western music and...

Veronica Swift

Gerry Geddes
At Birdland, singer Veronica Swift and the Benny Green Trio deliver a most satisfying evening of jazz, centered almost solely in the world of bop. At the late show on opening night, Green and his cohorts opened the set with three fiery examples of jazz artistry. On their first selection, Green's blistering original "Wiggin" (in...

Diane Schuur

Mark Dundas Wood
Early during the second show of her opening night at Birdland, singer-pianist Diane Schuur noted that second sets are good because you never know exactly what's going to happen with them. Certainly, she was in an anything-goes frame of mind. Playing to an appreciative 11pm crowd, she struck a highly informal tone, letting her instincts,...

Marnie Klar

Penelope Thomas
Delightfully bookended by "Stay Awake" (Robert B. & Richard M. Sherman), Marnie Klar's new show, Bedtime Stories, features nighttime, fairy tale, and storybook songs. Skillfully directed by Tanya Moberly, Klar presents her theme in a brief but illuminating introduction, in which we learn that this her her first cabaret that isn't…personal. And here is where...

Audrey Appleby

Robert Windeler
In Ladies Cheap Cocktails, her show at Pangea, Audrey Appleby offers an appealingly personal portrait of love and romance in a program of original music and lyrics, mostly written by her, with occasional assists from others. It may often be difficult to discern which of her fourteen songs derive from her own experience, which are...

Jeff Macauley

Robert Windeler
Probably no one but Jeff Macauley could have, or would have, fashioned such a narrowly focused cabaret show as his current offering at Pangea, Hollywood Party: Movie Songs 1928-1936. And he didn't just do this; the show is a reprise of a run from more than two decades ago, so we know that he's held...
Jeff McCauley

Bazazz! A Sequined Variety

Mark Dundas Wood
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 kids today miss out on such programs. (Fortunately, they can catch segments from many of the vintage ones on YouTube). The case can be made...

Robin Westle

Gerry Geddes
A "concept" in cabaret is a tricky thing. It can be an elaborate and complex narrative or character that permeates every moment of the show. It can be a tribute to another performer or to a songwriter. It can be a loosely structured through-line that might reach the audience only subliminally. Or a show can...

Lea DeLaria

Gerry Geddes
As far as I know, the stage at Birdland might still be steaming and too hot to touch after Lea DeLaria's incendiary David Bowie show there last week, which centered on her latest CD, House of David: delaria + bowie = jazz, The Orange Is the New Black star opened with "Boys Keep Swinging," a bold, dynamic...