Joe Gulla

Mark Dundas Wood
Joe Gulla's monologue The Bronx Queen is the first installment of a trilogy that was originally presented on Manhattan's Theatre Row a few years ago. Earlier this year it was restaged in the cabaret setting of Joe's Pub, and on August 20 it had an encore performance there. The work explores themes that have become...

Jeff Macauley

Gerry Geddes
In Le Grand Tour, which debuted recently at the Metropolitan Room, singer Jeff Macauley completes his trilogy of shows about classic Hollywood songwriters. Having previously paid tribute to Henry Mancini and Norman Gimbel, he focused this time on Michel Legrand, a true master of film music, with over 200 film and TV scores to his...

Barbra Streisand

Mark Dundas Wood
It's been several decades since Barbra Streisand had any real connection to the world of New York cabaret. But that, of course, is how her career began—in such small clubs as the Bon Soir and the Blue Angel, where she became a sensation while en route to becoming a legend. In 2009, she gave a...

Loni Love

Mark Dundas Wood
A comedian, actor, and author, Loni Love is probably best known as a panelist on television's talk fest The Real. Her brand of stand-up may not necessarily stick out in a crowd—she trades in traditional comic staples: race and ethnicity, politics, religion, sex, the misbehavior of celebrities. And she embraces, with seemingly no hesitation, the...

Anya Turner & Robert Grusecki

Robert Windeler
At the start of their current new show at Don't Tell Mama, Anya Turner, the lead-vocal half of this married couple's self-written evening of what she calls "modern cabaret" songs, acknowledges that this description might just be an oxymoron. Not to worry. A cabaret show need not be a compendium drawn from the American songbook,...

Lindsey Brett Carothers

Gerry Geddes
Lindsey Brett Carothers has been in a number of musicals, among them the off-Broadway hit Mad Libs, and she has guest-starred in a number of cabaret reviews and tributes. (I first saw her at the Duplex in the ongoing series Madame Mathieu's Soirée; she was one of the reasons I liked that show so much.)...

David Vernon

Roy Sander
David Vernon's new show is terrific. Before I elaborate, I'd like to back up to 2005, when I was introduced to his artistry through his CD "By Myself…" I was taken with his voice—pure, ethereal, hauntingly beautiful. I was struck by his eclectic musical taste, embracing such different worlds as Dietz & Schwartz, Michel Legrand, Édith...

BenDeLaCreme

Gerry Geddes
There has been a lot of talk recently about living in a "post-racial" time (by those who refuse to acknowledge the persistent, systemic racism in American society) or in a "post-gay" time (by those who consider marriage equality to be the end of the civil rights battle). I have noticed in a number of shows in...

Matt Alber

Gerry Geddes
Singer-songwriter Matt Alber's "The End of the World" has become a staple in New York cabaret, which is not surprising considering its soaring melody and dramatic, poetic lyrics charting the break-up of a love affair. But as Alber showed in his recent show at Joe's Pub, he is far from a "one hit wonder." He...

Lady Rizo

Gerry Geddes
Since her early days of "diva-dom" at the legendary Continental Baths, to her triumphs on Broadway and in Vegas, to her decades of touring and recording and filming, Bette Midler has influenced generations of performers hoping to capture her uniquely entertaining combination of broad, risqué humor, solid musicianship, and consummate showmanship. Often, particularly in the...