Ruby Manger Live! The Farewell Engagement

Mark Dundas Wood
The vanity, self-indulgence and capacity for delusion among show-business divas—male and female alike—have been satirized regularly over the decades. So there is nothing especially boundary-breaking about Julia Mattison's Ruby Manger Live! The Farewell Engagement, currently at Feinstein's/54 Below—yet the talents of Mattison (both as writer and performer) make the show something special. Particularly welcome is...

Heather Mac Rae

Gerry Geddes
Early on in her new show, Use Your Imagination, recently at the Beach Cafe, Heather Mac Rae revealed, with no hesitation, that she is 70 years old. In fact, she seemed downright gleeful about it—and why not? It has been nearly 50 years since she first set foot on a Broadway stage in Here's Where I...

Inner City Reunion Concert

Gerry Geddes
Directed by Tom O'Horgan, Inner City opened in late 1971 and ran just under 100 performances. The passionate following it and its cast album have attracted since then makes it the quintessential cult musical. There are a few possible reasons for its initial failure. It was the fourth O'Horgan show running concurrently on Broadway; the...

Villain: DeBlanks

Mark Dundas Wood
In the 1950s, Leonard B. Stern and Roger Price—a pair of TV comedy writers—invented Mad Libs, the comedic word game in which certain nouns, verbs and adjectives in a story are left blank, to be filled in with random suggestions. The duo clearly had a keen appreciation of absurd, Jabberwocky-ish wordplay. And Mad Libs was...

Ari Shapiro

Penelope Thomas
With his luxurious vintage-yet-current baritone, and his educated demeanor and sleekly handsome presence, it was easy to forget that Homeward was Ari Shapiro's freshman solo cabaret performance. If his is a face for radio, we're in luck. Nonetheless, it's a steep learning curve to go from Broadcast Journalist to Seasoned Crooner on your first show...

Peter and Will Anderson

Robert Windeler
The Anderson Twins want us all to understand that Harold Arlen, this week's honoree in the brothers' ambitious month-long Songbook Summit series, is every bit the equal of the other three subjects of their tribute (Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Richard Rodgers). It's just that Arlen was somewhat of a loner, never had a real Broadway...

The ManOPause Boys

Robert Windeler
The 1990s called. They want their clichés back. The ones about Viagra and the other aspects of male late-middle aging. Plus, the decade would like to retire at least some of its hopeful sayings, such as "50 is the new 35." Well, the clichés and sayings abounded on the Triad stage the other night, in...

It Always Feels Like the World Is Ending

Gerry Geddes
It Always Feels Like the World Is Ending, a new revue that played recently at Don't Tell Mama, celebrated the work of composer Benny Gammerman and lyricist Dylan Hartwell, both of whom appeared in the show along with Amanda Savan, Cortney Wolfson, Melissa Rose Hirsch, and Greg Sullivan. As the title implies, most of the...

Tammy McCann

Penelope Thomas
Chicago jazz singer Tammy McCann recently completed a month of Thursdays at Pangea, performing a different show each week. She is working with a formidable instrument: she has a rich lower register and a powerful upper voice that speak to her early classical training. A former "Raelette" backing vocalist for Ray Charles, MCann has sung...

Shaina Taub

Gerry Geddes
At a time when most pop composers seem to have forgotten what melody is, let alone how to write a coherent, inventive lyric, it is cause for both hope and celebration that singer-songwriter Shaina Taub is carrying on the great tradition of Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Rickie Lee Jones, and other iconic women...