Stacie Koby

Mark Dundas Wood
In "Committed," her new show at The Duplex, Stacie Koby ignores the old show-business warning about the dangers of being upstaged when working with animals or children. There are no critters in the act, but Koby is visibly pregnant with her second child, scheduled to arrive several weeks from now. Maybe she figured that because...

Delphi Harrington and Woody Regan

Robert Windeler
In their current show at the Metropolitan Room, Delphi Harrington and Woody Regan, two pleasantly seasoned performers of a certain age, with help from director Ann McCormack, have managed to create the feel of performing ad hoc at a party in someone's living room. This is mostly a good thing, as "Cowardly Swann," their awkwardly...

Maureen McGovern

Robert Windeler
In her current show at 54 Below, based on the work of an eclectic and worthy group of female singers and songwriters, Maureen McGovern evinces no diminution in her vocal and dramatic warmth and power. She may be, as she says on stage, "slouching toward 66" and suffering from "CRSS (Can't Remember Shit Syndrome)," but...

William TN Hall

Mark Dundas Wood
A photo advertising "Other People's Parties"—the recent solo cabaret debut of William TN Hall, at The Duplex—shows a hangdog Hall slumped at a bar, nursing a drink with one hand and propping up a cigarette with the other. His expression is that of a man resigned to the shabbiness of the world. But after you see...

Tim Realbuto

Mark Dundas Wood
Earlier this winter the Metropolitan Room generated much publicity for setting the Guinness record for longest variety show ever. With Tim Realbuto's "Bookseller in the Rain: A Tribute to the Music of Maury Yeston," the club may well have quietly attained another superlative achievement: the most singers and musicians to simultaneously perform on (and around)...

Diane Schuur and the DIVA Jazz Orchestra

Robert Windeler
"With Love from Deeds and DIVA," the Valentine's weekend show at the Iridium, paired West Coast contemporary jazz singer Diane Schuur with the New York City-based DIVA Jazz Orchestra (15 strong for this booking) on songs about love, appropriately to the occasion. This upbeat collaboration (the first for diva and Diva in several years) provided...

Raissa Katona Bennett & Kenneth Gartman

Mark Dundas Wood
One of the most appealing things about "3 Decades in the Dark—Raissa and Kenneth Go to the Movies" (at the Laurie Beechman Theatre) is the easy camaraderie that performers Raissa Katona Bennett and Kenneth Gartman have with each other. The longtime friends explain at one point that they'd wanted for years to work together on a...

Marin Mazzie

Robert Windeler
Many cabaret artists appropriate all sorts of songs to illustrate their life stories. But judging from her very winning recent show (a reprise from 2011-2012) at 54 Below, Marin Mazzie may be the only singer who chronicles her first two decades of musical influences in such specific fashion, employing the decidedly non-rock pop songs—including a bit...

Tim Di Pasqua

Kevin Scott Hall
Tim Di Pasqua, a veteran singer/songwriter in New York's cabaret scene for over two decades (by way of his origins in San Francisco), took to the small stage in Don't Tell Mama's brick room to deliver a show consisting solely of his own compositions. Remarkably, he informed us that it was the first time he had...

Pamela Lewis

Robert Windeler
In her astonishing new show at the Metropolitan Room, "New York State of Mind: The Songs of Billy Joel," Pamela Lewis both did admirable justice to the prolific composer/performer and re-interpreted his songs as singularly her own. Offering new, vibrant, self-created arrangements of 15 Joel compositions—both familiar and relatively obscure—from 1971 to 1986, Lewis changed...