Francesca Amari

Robert Windeler
Certainly deserved and heartfelt, Francesca Amari's recent tribute to Gilda Radner, at the Metropolitan Room, too often suffered from a feeling of being once removed from its subject. While Amari and Radner were both from Michigan, they grew up some 200 miles and a generation apart—and never met. Right off the bat, Amari allowed that...

Brittney Lee Hamilton

Gerry Geddes
In spite of her diminutive size, red hair, and brassy delivery, Brittney Lee Hamilton has never played Annie, but has been cast as a child well after her teens. Her love/hate response to this situation inspired her New York cabaret debut, "No, I've Never Played Annie," which recently ended its run at the Laurie Beechman...

David Alpher and Jennie Litt

Robert Windeler
It's always nice when someone comes up with a new way to present the old favorites in a cabaret show. The husband-and-wife team of David Alpher and Jennie Litt have embraced such a notion in their current offering at Don't Tell Mama, "The Elegant and the Immigrant: Cole Porter & Irving Berlin Together." Calling them "the...

Tim Connell

Gerry Geddes
Tim Connell's "Here's The Thing," which recently completed a run at Don't Tell Mama, is an example of a good, old-fashioned cabaret show: a singer, a pianist, some good songs, some intelligent patter and a microphone. No frills, no pretensions—just solid entertainment. Accompanied by his talented music director, James Followell, Connell gives us a glimpse...

Kelli Rabke

Gerry Geddes
Thanks to her big expressive voice and sparkling personality, Kelli Rabke has developed a good Broadway/musical theatre resume. She draws from it for much of her show at the Metropolitan Room, putting the material in more or less chronological order and offering each song or section as a chapter in the book of her life....

Tony Babino

Mark Dundas Wood
Apparently we ain't heard everything yet. It's been 65 years since Al Jolson's death, but the performer still continues to claim attention. Few people today have memories of Jolson live and in person. But larger numbers will recall the 1946 biographical film The Jolson Story, in which Larry Parks starred (with Jolson himself providing vocal...

Tedd Firth, Julian Fleisher, and Leon Fleisher

Gerry Geddes
Tedd Firth has been one of the brightest lights in cabaret and jazz in New York City for a while, but he is usually found supporting vocalists, brilliantly. So imagine my surprise to find his name in the title of this new show, "Firth, Fleisher and Fleisher in Concert." A friend turned me on to...

Rain Pryor

Gerry Geddes
Jazz and comedy rarely work together as well as they do in Rain Pryor's "Divorced, Dangerous, Diva-licious" at the Iridium. Carrying on the tradition of her father, legendary comic Richard Pryor, she is hilarious in her self-deprecating survey of her life, romantic and otherwise. But the soundtrack she chooses for this story is what makes...

Lisa Jason

Mark Dundas Wood
Bullying in schools has likely been a problem ever since schools were first established. (I can personally attest that it was alive and unwell in the early 1960s.) Only lately, though, has it gotten the attention it deserves from commentators and activists. In Massachusetts in the 1970s, Lisa Jason lived through a childhood filled with...

Jimmy Webb

Gerry Geddes
Jimmy Webb, the man responsible for "Up, Up and Away", "Didn't We", "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "MacArthur Park," and on and on, is such an iconic songwriter that he could easily rest on his laurels and just present his hits in their original form and let the audience be satisfied and excited...