Lavender Songs – A Queer Weimar Berlin Cabaret

Gerry Geddes
In Lavender Songs – A Queer Weimar Berlin Cabaret, actor/singer/writer Jeremy Lawrence, in the guise of his alter ego, "kabarettist extraordinaire" Tante Fritzy, manages to turn the tiny stage at Pangea into a veritable time machine, whisking the audience away to a beautifully realized evocation of a club in Germany in the thirties—a time when...

Love for Sale

Mark Dundas Wood
Tilted Productions' Love for Sale—a "cabaret play" directed by Robert F. Gross—features international songs from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, many of them titles from the Kurt Weill catalogue. Kelly Burke portrays an unnamed American chanteuse—a struggling but spirited character with a penchant for self-dramatization—who undoubtedly will bring the name Sally Bowles (or, at any...

Lee Squared

Robert Windeler
Showbiz mavens of a certain age will likely chortle nonstop during "Lee Squared," the show created by David Maiocco and Chuck Sweeney and currently playing at the Metropolitan Room. The pair portray, respectively, Liberace and Peggy Lee, in what can scarcely be called a tribute. (Ms. Lee, at least, has already had her deserved share of...

Judy Pancoast

Gerry Geddes
I think pretty much all of us at one point or another in our music listening lives had a soft spot for The Carpenters and for Karen Carpenter's extraordinary vocals, at once light and dark, gentle and strong; in her hands, the most saccharine of songs revealed a steely spine, and the saddest of ballads...

The Meeting*

Gerry Geddes
Justin Sayre has one of the most distinctive voices in New York clubs and cabarets. I mean that in both senses of the word "voice." He sounds like no one else—his voice is arch, camp, musical, barbed, questioning and hilarious. It is just the sort of voice and sound one would expect from the creator...

Life Is for Living: Conversations with Coward

Gerry Geddes
Sir Noël Coward, the subject of Simon Green's Life Is for Living: Conversations with Coward—which was co-created by its star, Simon Green, and its musical director, David Shrubsole, and is currently on view at 59E59 Theaters—was often referred to as "the master" for his prodigious talents as composer, lyricist, playwright, director, actor (on stage, screen,...

Mary Sue Daniels

Mark Dundas Wood
Mary Sue Daniels's delightful show at Don't Tell Mama—"Straight Outta 'Conda" (directed by Lina Koutrakos)—had something good in common with the previous show I reviewed for this site: Jen Fellman's "Frenchy." Both were staged memoirs in which carefully chosen songs were integrated into a narrative that would be solid without any music at all. Also...

Duchess

Robert Windeler
For those of us who occasionally crave a close-harmony dose of the Boswell Sisters or the Andrews Sisters in our cabaret-attending lives (and there may be more of us than we care to admit) Duchess will do nicely. And if any one of us desires a small dose of the tropical strumming of vintage Hawaiian...

Remy Block

Gerry Geddes
Singer Remy Block returned to Pangea with a revised version of her earlier show "On a Lonely Road: Travelin’ with Joni"—her tribute to Joni Mitchell. Her love of the iconic singer/songwriter was obvious, but she often failed to translate that feeling into successful takes on her songs. Mitchell’s lyrics/stories are often at a remove from...

Jen Fellman

Mark Dundas Wood
In her recent show "Frenchy," at Don't Tell Mama, Jen Fellman told of her three-year stint living in Paris, striving to transform herself into a Parisian. The show was a striking piece of cabaret theatre, graced by the sharp direction of John-Richard Thompson and the sensitivity and show-woman-ship of Fellman herself. The evening was not...