by Martha Wade Steketee   We make our way to the second floor Buttenwieser Hall at the 92nd Street Y on a sultry June evening without benefit of functioning elevators. Our goal: an upper floor concert hall in which we are promised recollections of the life and legacy...

        by Martha Wade Steketee   Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic narrative poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie from 1847 (yes, I looked it up) muses poetically on the serious topics of separated lovers and the expulsion of the French from the expansive New France...

  By Martha Wade Steketee   I’ve spent the past 12 hours melting into the memory of Karen Mason’s voice. Her current show Mason in May runs for the rest of the month in Don’t Tell Mama, the intimate New York cabaret space that she helped to open in 1982. The long narrow main theater...

    By Martha Wade Steketee       Broadway performances past and present were evoked in the newest “Jamie deRoy & Friends” cabaret show on the intimate Birdland stage. This established, curated, and regular series of ensemble shows hosted by the personable deRoy...

    By Martha Wade Steketee       For the trio of society’s cast-offs at the core of Jeff Talbott’s 90-minute play The Gravedigger’s Lullaby, life is having a pot with barely enough stew, a work day sweating over laundry or digging graves, and an evening enduring an...

    by Martha Wade Steketee     The experiential onslaught of Chess Match No. 5 begins as you enter the steeply pitched seating of the June Havoc Theatre. Suspended iridescent strings of bare bulbs – a not infrequent element of set designs over the past few years – are...

    By Martha Wade Steketee   Class, culture, language, appropriation, and integrity underscore the quiet power of Tanya Saracho’s Fade produced by Primary Stages at the Cherry Lane Theater. A story about storytelling, a play about the creative process, a demonstration of...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     “When you’re a woman of a certain age,” Tulis McCall impishly informs us, “regret is everywhere.” McCall’s one woman show Are You Serious?, running Sundays through the end of March at the Cornelia Street Café (where it has been charming...

By Martha Wade Steketee   Ute Lemper was framed in her recent 54 Below engagement by comfort and edginess – black leather pants topped with a short sleeveless black sheath dress. These costuming contrasts were mirrored in the juxtaposition of her elegant physicality (dancing arms and...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     January in Manhattan means Marilyn Maye has brought her post New Year “by request” performances to the cozy and classy Metropolitan Room. The concept is delightful: woven into familiar tunes her existing fans yearn to hear, patrons have the...

  Here they are! Take a look at the Best Five of the 2016 Season in Theater and Cabaret. It’s the end of 2016 . . . hard to believe it raced by so quickly with all its turbulence. Theater Pizzazz writers, in both theater and cabaret, were extremely busy seeing many, many shows. Each one...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     The sixtieth edition of the Sondheim Unplugged concert series, that began its monthly adventures at the beloved Don’t Tell Mama venue on West 46th Street and is now ensconced at the more upscale Feinstein’s 54 Below, enchanted the crowd this...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     Performer Gideon Irving claims he surfs couches as a professional house guest in exchange for his intimate performances. In fact, he’ll survey the audience for future places to hang his hat for the night before the performance concludes. You...

  By Martha Wade Steketee       The slightly run down tea shop setting in the current Signature revival of Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold” … and the boys — directed by the playwright and designed by Christopher H. Barreca (set), Susan Hilferty (costume), Stephen...

    By Martha Wade Steketee       Corinna Sowers Adler is a picture of generosity in spirit, gesture, physique, instinct, and breadth of song selection. On a November Saturday in the gorgeous Appel Room at Jazz and Lincoln Center she helped us face down our looming...

  By Martha Wade Steketee     Laine Kazan has a cold, we soon realize. Raspy vocal quality, tetchy intonation, and without the big sound and wild abandon we have seen from her on stage and screen. Yet, in Tuesday evening’s Iridium performance, I couldn’t have cared less that...

    By Martha Wade Steketee   Chris Gethard’s solo play about depression, his long-term relationship with his odd-ball therapist Barbara, vivid experiences with a range of mind-altering substances, and the joy of making people laugh, directed with nuance by Kimberly Senior, is...

      by Martha Wade Steketee     Repossession, privileged history, origin story, or folderol? An audience member at The Black Crook: An Original, Magical, and Spectacular Musical Drama at the Abrons Arts Center’s Underground Theater might think they’re poised to...

    By Martha Wade Steketee       “Sit back, relax, Mama’s gonna read.” The lanky instantly recognizable and inviting presence of Julie Halston, described as “a cross between Joan Rivers and Hayley Mills” (and I’d add with a vocal delivery that has blended...

  By Martha Wade Steketee       Natalie Douglas, a New York cabaret stalwart originally from LA, calls New York City’s Birdland jazz haven her artistic home base. The charming Jim Caruso noted in his introduction to “Stevie Songs: The Music of Stevie Nicks & Stevie...

  By Martha Wade Steketee     “Small but mighty,” our host Ken Prescott named us, the stalwart and engaged members of a recent evening audience at the Dorothy Dale Kloss and Ken Prescott cabaret evening “Two for the Show.” Our crowd included a number of first-timers to their...

  By Martha Wade Steketee     We let the sunshine in, and basked. For two concert performances on a recent Sunday night, several tribes assembled that were associated with American’s original tribal rock musical Hair. Veterans of the 1968 Broadway and 1977 and 2009 revival...

    By Martha Wade Steketee   The Metropolitan Room’s air conditioning could barely keep up with the heat generated by the enthusiastic early show crowd at the venue on a recent evening. We gathered to experience the theatrical wonders of Vivian Reed in intimate conversation...

by Martha Wade Steketee   Nature provided the steam outside on a Manhattan evening in July, while Broadway veterans generated the theatrical steam heat of 1954’s The Pajama Game in climate-controlled cool at 54 Below, assembled as a concert presentation by musical director Jacob Yates....

        by Martha Wade Steketee Communing with the early work of theatrical familiars has its charms. Rifling through juvenilia on paper or early play script efforts newly staged, it’s possible to identify themes that later preoccupy a writer, upon which we can reflect and...