The Engaygement

Gerry Geddes
The Engaygement, the new musical with book, lyrics, and music by David Auxier-Loyola, (in which boy-meets-boy morphs into boy-weds-boy legally), is a hybrid—at once a workshop of a new musical play, a showcase for new songs and a cabaret show. While it is an enjoyable evening, the focus is scattered among those three intentions so...

Karen Oberlin

Mark Dundas Wood
Karen Oberlin comes on stage for "His Aim Is True: The Singular Songs of Elvis Costello" at Stage 72 wearing what looks to be an elaborate choir robe, fit for an early-20th-Century celebrity evangelist. But there's one difference: her outfit is not a creamy, calla-lily white but a flat black. She's Aimee Semple McPherson taking on...

Marlene VerPlanck

Mark Dundas Wood
In a one-nighter at Jazz at Kitano recently, Marlene VerPlanck reminded audiences of why she's so greatly respected as a musician. Her singing has a kind of matter-of-factness, and yet it seems to befit a special occasion. There's an effervescent quality in her timbre that evokes the feeling one may get upon hearing sleigh bells...

Charles Busch

Mark Dundas Wood
Charles Busch's current show at 54 Below is called "That Girl/That Boy"—a title that points to something essential about his longtime approach to drag performance. Unlike some drag guys, Busch has retained his male identity when it comes to billing. Had he chosen, he could easily have come up with some outrageous, giggle-inspiring female nom de...

Lauren Fox

Mark Dundas Wood
With her recent Metropolitan Room show, "Groupies—The Muses Behind the Legends of Rock & Roll," Lauren Fox brought her considerable theatrical mystique and dramaturgical smarts to a show about the sometimes indomitable and sometimes pitiable young consorts of 1960s and 1970s rock musicians. Two of the muses whom Fox showcased—Marianne Faithfull and Stevie Nicks—became household names...

Charlotte Patton

Mark Dundas Wood
The title of Charlotte Patton's Metropolitan Room show, "Celebrating Men (Bless Their Hearts)," captures the tone of the evening perfectly. Patton's program takes a partly bemused but mostly amused look at the male animal. There are no songs about how the big lugs always leave the toilet seats up, but there might well have been....

Yanna Avis

Robert Windeler
In her recent one-night stand at 54 Below, "Make Some Magic" (a reprise from an appearance there in April), Yanna Avis appeared sleek and stylish. Unfortunately, her show was anything but that. She sang in a throaty voice that at times approached talk-singing, which could work well for the kind of act and venue she...

Tony Danza

Robert Windeler
His terrific current show at Café Carlyle, "Standards and Stories," finds Tony Danza in a state of what I can only describe as grounded exuberance. This seeming oxymoron combines the wisdom and taste of an impossibly lithe man on the cusp of Medicare Advantage who maintains his apparently lifelong childlike enthusiasm for just about everything....

Jeff Macauley

Mark Dundas Wood
Film composer Henry Mancini (1924-94) was able to adapt nimbly to whatever professional assignment was at hand. He could write music with a hip, cool sound—for instance, the themes from TV's Peter Gunn (1958-61) and the big screen's Pink Panther films. But he could also create striking ballads—most famously, of course, "Moon River" from 1961's...

More Music by Alex Rybeck

Robert Windeler
Composer tributes are a staple of cabaret shows, but in most cases the composer him- or herself is either deceased or otherwise unavailable to take part in such ventures. In his recent outing at 54 Below, directed by Sara Louise Lazarus, Alex Rybeck proved to be an exception. Not only did he write the music for...