By Martha Wade Steketee     The show starts on the stairs at 54 Below. Twice in the past few weeks, these aural pre-shows have been somber celebrations of great diva lives. On August 16, the soundtrack was Aretha Franklin, whose death earlier in the day had the world reeling....

        by Martha Wade Steketee   The first show empties out, and a rapt audience of cabaret enthusiasts files into 54 Below for a late-night show featuring Eric Yves Garcia honoring Tony Bennett. Garcia has built a following with regular gigs in piano bars around...

  By Martha Wade Steketee     You will hear, see, and feel the future of musical theater in the Joe Iconis and Joe Tracz creation Be More Chill, now at The Pershing Square Signature Center. In just over two hours, our adolescent protagonist loses and finds his way, his parent...

  By Martha Wade Steketee   We assembled to celebrate, with Broadway Baby and cabaret veteran Vivian Reed, what would have been Lena Horne’s 101st birthday. Some of us attended the performance infused with the spirit of Horne, and others knew Vivian Reed’s work over the years....

    By Martha Wade Steketee   It feels as if Anita Gillette has been part of our lives forever. On Broadway and Off-Broadway stages, and on television and movie screens, we’ve seen her play the funny sister or the off-beat cousin or the distracted mom or the deliciously goofy...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     Monday night at Feinstein’s / 54 Below, David Yazbek’s multi-modal jazz band of extraordinary performers was family welcoming guests stopping by on their night off from The Band’s Visit. Some pals joined the gang on stage, some stayed in the...

    By Martha Wade Steketee   “What if I told you it’s going to be alright? … What if I told you it began tonight?” Somewhere on a continuum that includes Machine Dazzle’s shimmery costumes adorning the performance pyrotechnics of Taylor Mac and the languid women characters...

    By Martha Wade Steketee       Musicians who have played together for years reunite for two Birdland performances this December. Winter tunes, holiday tunes, tunes of remembrance and family and loss. Billy Stritch at the piano with a few choice and delicious vocals...

  By Martha Wade Steketee   Stacey Kent is at Birdland to promote her 2017 album I Know I Dream, and lends her delicate vocals and spare musical stylings to English, Portuguese, and French tunes from that recording. She also delights with more familiar selections of standards...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     Julie Halston is a librarian of memories, a seeker of wisdom in unexpected places, a literary comedian. She’s been reading to audiences from newspapers, memoirs, advice columns, and self-help tomes for years as part of her stand-up act,...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     Ann Hampton Callaway is a Chicago girl with one of the biggest hearts in cabaret. On a recent evening at Birdland, on a day when a deranged dude in a rental truck several miles downtown killed eight people and injured many more, Callaway...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     Lea DeLaria holds court with passion and grace in her David Bowie tribute show. Twice a night through Saturday October 28 at Birdland Jazz Club, this show based on DeLaria’s 2015 crowd-sourced recording House of David: delaria + bowie = jazz...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     “I finally made it to Birdland!” Melissa Manchester, who has had a career of many decades, with more than a score of albums, and performances around the world, exclaimed early into her set in the intimate jazz venue an excitement at being in...

      By Martha Wade Steketee     Tony Roberts, one of the original stars of Sugar, the 1972 Broadway musical based entirely on the Billy Wilder, cross-dressing, Prohibition-era comedy film Some Like It Hot, hosted the “54 Sings Sugar” chapter of the 54 Below series...

  By Martha Wade Steketee     Modern society is packed with machine-crafted and hand-hewn objects intended for display or consumption or decoration. In societies of abundance, we are often told that we focus much too much on accumulation of non-human stuff. But what if those...

          by Martha Wade Steketee   July 25, 2017 really is the 87th birthday of Annie Ross and marks the 11th year of regular appearances at the venue by this actress and jazz musician. The celebratory vibe at the Metropolitan Room this fine summer evening is...

        by Martha Wade Steketee   Linda Lavin is a New York City girl who holds audiences rapt by comedic and dramatic performances on television, film, and stage. What cabaret lovers have discovered over the years is that that she brings all her performance skills...

        by Martha Wade Steketee   The scene at Birdland this steamy July evening skews young—tables of college-aged pals, a large group of teens from Britain. The bubbling young crowd, perhaps here on a first visit to this venue, perhaps a first visit to the city,...

    By Martha Wade Steketee       British-born Barb Jungr is often described in creative cross-breed superlatives: Edith Piaf meets Carmen McRae, jazz meets blues, pop rock meets the Great American Songbook. She is, in fact, an absolutely charming raconteur with a...

    By Martha Wade Steketee     I am a fan of the divas that inspire the passionate fandom Seth Sikes revealed in his June 24 cabaret show. I’ve wondered, as I’ve read reviews of his tribute show appearances over the past few years, whether his performance style would land...

      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...