Janice Hall

Kevin Scott Hall
"I'd Rather Be Doing This…" Metropolitan Room – February 12, March 5, April 18 If there is any lingering doubt that an intimate cabaret room can conjure up magic like little else, and that blazing stars can be made in those dark little spaces, one need only seek out Janice Hall and erase those doubts...

Robert Creighton

Roy Sander
"Ain't We Got Fun!" Metropolitan Room – February 12 & 13 Moonlighting from his eight-shows-a-week job playing the ship's purser in the Roundabout production of Anything Goes, tenor Robert Creighton docked at the Metropolitan Room for a couple of evenings last month to launch his debut CD, "Ain't We Got Fun!" Early on in the...

Susan Hodgdon

Kevin Scott Hall
"On the Bumpy Road to Love" Don't Tell Mama – February 25 When Susan Hodgdon enters from the back of the room at the start of her new show singing, sans mic, a ballad version of "Silly Love Songs" (Paul & Linda McCartney), touching the shoulders of audience members as she slowly makes her way...

Michael Kirk Lane

Mark Dundas Wood
"Songs from the Rock, the Street, and the Hood" Don't Tell Mama – February 7, 9, and 16 It took me a while to warm up to Michael Kirk Lane in this return of his debut show featuring songs from classic children's television programs. But halfway through the set, in the final part of a...

Karen Oberlin

Kevin Scott Hall
"Stringing Along With Love" Metropolitan Room – February 14, 21, 28 Pretty and winsome Karen Oberlin, a fixture on the cabaret circuit in recent years, has brought her new act to the Metropolitan Room. "Stringing Along With Love" is an intimate evening of unusual love songs, both old and new, featuring Oberlin's jazzy vocal stylings...

Eric Michael Gillett and La Tanya Hall

Mark Dundas Wood
"Nothing to Lose But Your Heart – The Songs of Lynn Ahrens & Stephen Flaherty" Feinstein's at Loews Regency – February 21-25 The songwriting team of composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens often writes songs for musicals with a show-business setting. That's something the audience learns early on in this program featuring the duo's...

Alec Mapa

Mark Dundas Wood
"Baby Daddy" Laurie Beechman Theatre – February 9, 10, 11 At the top of his show at the Laurie Beechman Theatre, actor-comedian Alec Mapa told the audience about his recent Las Vegas engagement. He said he had been asked by management to watch his language. Mapa assured the largely gay and gay-friendly Beechman crowd that...

Noah’s Very Unusual Insight

Mark Dundas Wood
The Duplex  –  January 27, 28 The premise of Noah's Very Unusual Insight (directed by Stephanie Fittro) is pleasingly silly. Patient "Noah A." (Michael Hanko, who also wrote the script), a gay man living in New York, is introduced to the audience by his longtime psychotherapist, Dr. Lorna Gallo (Peter Lappin). Noah suffers from ABD...

Gary Negbaur

Elizabeth Ahlfors
"Diggin' the Beatles: A Pianoman's Soulful Journey through the Beatles Songbook" Metropolitan Room  –  Jan. 19, 20 "Diggin' the Beatles," at the Metropolitan Room, was not a scholastic exploration of the Beatles, a group that disbanded over 40 years ago and yet still has a musical Popularity Quotient that is universal, spanning generations. Nor was...

Parker Scott

Kevin Scott Hall
"Selecting Souvenirs" Don't Tell Mama  –  January 28, then monthly In his new show, "Selecting Souvenirs" (also the name of the CD he released late last year), Parker Scott tells us that he recently realized that this was his fifteenth year of doing cabaret in New York and beyond. Now, after a break of a...