Celia Berk

Robert Windeler
No sophomore slump here. On the contrary, Celia Berk's new Metropolitan Room show, "Manhattan Serenade," is even better than her remarkable debut outing of last season. Under the fluid direction of Jeff Harnar, Berk seems to have broadened her ability to embrace an audience while simultaneously assessing her bone-deep feelings about the subjects that concern...

Jennifer Roberts

Robert Windeler
Lyricist Sheldon Harnick, who will turn 92 on April 30, could hardly have asked for a more exuberant or heartfelt early birthday celebration than the one Jennifer Roberts threw for him in the form of her show at Don't Tell Mama, "Jennifer Roberts: She Loves…Sheldon!" Her upfront fan-girl enthusiasm for her favorite lyric writer, dating...

Midnight at the Never Get

Gerry Geddes
Midnight at the Never Get, a new musical chronicling the tumultuous birth and rise of the Gay Liberation Movement through the relationship of two men whose lives intersect with this historic moment, is being given its inaugural workshop at Don't Tell Mama. The characters are fictional, but the play manages to pack a lot of historical...

Madame Mathieu’s Soirée

Gerry Geddes
Drew Fornarola is certainly not one to rest on his laurels. His play Straight (co-written with Scott Elmegreen) is enjoying a successful, critically acclaimed run. For others, this would be more than enough for a season, but Fornarola has fashioned another ongoing entertainment to delight New York audiences: Madame Mathieu's Soirée. Its premise is that...

Gay Marshall

Mark Dundas Wood
Over the years, singer-actress Gay Marshall has made the musical repertoire of Édith Piaf something of a specialty. With the 2015 centenary of the legendary French singer's birth, she has been especially busy of late singing Piaf's material. Yet in many ways her persona doesn't seem much at all like that of the singer she celebrates. Piaf's image,...

Melissa Errico

Robert Windeler
In her recent show at Feinstein's/54 Below, directed by Robbie Rozelle and backed only by musical director Tedd Firth ("my orchestra") on piano, Melissa Errico neatly melded the two major musical strains of her performing career. Songs from Broadway (her own roles and those of others) showcased her solid and soaring "legit" soprano; her contrasting...

Monday Night Madness

Gerry Geddes
One of the most sorely missed treasures of New York cabaret life in the last century was Eighty-Eight‘s, an understated yet elegant room on 10th Street in the West Village. I saw a lot of shows there. I reviewed a lot of shows there. I directed a lot of shows there. It was one of...

Carol Woods

Robert Windeler
If any cabaret singer these days can get away with an amorphously themed show with no discernable through-line, surely it's Carol Woods. Oh, she had a sort-of title for her recent set at Feinstein's/54 Below: "Lighting Up a Stage with the Barry Levitt Trio." And that was a promise splendidly fulfilled by musical director Levitt...

Kim Maresca

Gerry Geddes
Ruthless! The Musical, the satirical take on the classic killer-kid movie The Bad Seed, is currently enjoying a successful off-Broadway revival. One of its stars, Kim Maresca (who plays the harried and put-upon mother, Judy Denmark), went a few blocks uptown to Feinstein's/54 Below in a show that focused more on Broadway than off, and...

Steven Page

Gerry Geddes
Early on in his Café Carlyle debut, singer-songwriter Steven Page admits with sly understatement that he "was in a band for a long time." That band was the Toronto-based Barenaked Ladies, which toured (and is still touring) the world and sold millions of albums, and Page was its co-founder and lead singer and songwriter. Since...