Deborah Stone

Mark Dundas Wood
Early on in her show at Don't Tell Mama, Still Exactly Where I Belong, Deborah Stone sings a pairing of Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer's "I'm Old Fashioned" and Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's "Simple Little Things." The first of these numbers seems to define this performer well. And I don't mean that in a...

Micky Dolenz

Robert Windeler
Those of us who are fans of both the Monkees songbook and Broadway show tunes are twice blessed by the current Micky Dolenz show at Feinstein's/54 Below (co-directed by Van Dean and Dolenz himself). Some fifty years on, Dolenz is still best known as the lead singer of The Monkees, a "Fab Four" group manufactured...

Broadway “Boozy” Brunch

Gerry Geddes
Broadway "Boozy" Brunch is a great idea—a hybrid of Sunday afternoon brunch, late night piano bar, and full-fledged cabaret revue. That's what Don't Tell Mama is offering on Sundays at noon and again at 2:00PM. Patrick DeGennaro oversees the festivities, playing piano with his accustomed mastery and providing vocals, both solo and in tandem with...

Amy Friedl Stoner

Gerry Geddes
Amy Friedl Stoner's Dreamchaser at the Metropolitan Room was one of the most stylish, assured, intelligent, entertaining New York cabaret debuts I have had the pleasure to witness. Using an inspired and well-thought-out program of songs spanning Broadway, the Great American Songbook, country, folk, and contemporary, she filtered all selections through a singular vision and...

Liz Rubino

Gerry Geddes
In Make Yourself Comfortable, singer Liz Rubino's Don't Tell Mama debut, there are two elements and styles at war with each other. One is that of a thoughtful, emotional storyteller making even very well-known lyrics live and breathe in ways that surprise and satisfy. The other is that of a nervous, inexperienced novice (which she...

Louis-and-Ella!

Gerry Geddes
Trent Armand Kendall and Natasha Yvette Williams are terrific singers with lengthy theatre credits, and the idea of them singing songs made famous by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald is very promising. Unfortunately, in Louis-and-Ella! (written by Kendall) at the Cutting Room, they were awash in a conceptual sea. Classifying the show as a "jazzical"...

The Outer Space

Gerry Geddes
The Outer Space, currently running at Joe's Pub, is a song cycle set in the future about the desire to escape the stress, fear, danger ,and drudgery of urban life and the inevitability that those same problems, albeit in different forms, are waiting in whatever destination that escape winds up. Ethan Lipton, who wrote the...

Kim Sutton

Mark Dundas Wood
With Live to Tell: My Life, Madonna's Songs, performer Kim Sutton, director Lennie Watts, and musical director Steven Ray Watkins have created an immensely ambitious cabaret event. Using songs associated with—and often written (or co-written) by—pop star Madonna Ciccone, Sutton presents a sort of sung-through musical pageant based on her own personal history. We see...

Shelly Watson

Gerry Geddes
Singer/comedienne Shelly Watson takes the stage at the Laurie Beechman Theatre as equal parts Sophie Tucker, Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, Beverly Sills, and a drag queen (in this case a female drag queen). She's been hosting burlesque evenings at the same venue for a while, so her loud, bawdy style is easily traced back to...

Susanne Mack

Robert Windeler
Anyone who can legitimately include the Patsy Cline country standard "I Fall to Pieces" (Hank Cochran, Harlan Howard) in a show about a German girlhood near the Black Forest certainly has my admiration as well as my attention. Susanne Mack accomplished that and more in her recent compelling outing at Pangea (directed by Gretchen Cryer)....