Setting aside the once-ubiquitous novelty hit “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp),” I had only dim memories of mid-20th-century song parodist Allan Sherman (1924-73). But after seeing “Billy Ehrlacher: Is He Here Again?” at Don’t Tell Ma …Read more

He seems a most mild-mannered, unassuming gentleman. Yet when Ben Cassara seated himself center stage for a one-off appearance at Cafe Noctambulo recently, he commanded attention. Cassara’s singing has an almost conversational quality at times. He cl …Read more

A recent one-nighter at 54 Below brought Australian performer (and a Bistro Award winner in 2001 and 2002) Kane Alexander back to Manhattan. He’d first appeared in the city a decade and a half ago. An appealing performer with bright eyes and a friend …Read more

Were the characters in Sheldon Bull’s Mallorca (directed by Donald Brenner for Abingdon Theatre Company) to move to network television, their show could easily be dubbed The Golden Guys. It would, of course, be outfitted with a laugh track and a them …Read more

The comic backstager has a long, bright history. (Think of Bottom and the rest of Shakespeare’s hapless mechanicals rehearsing Pyramus and Thisbe.) And—believe it—the genre is not going away anytime soon. (Consider Terrence McNally’s collection of ma …Read more

Kevin Dozier’s recent show at the Metropolitan Room (which will return to the club in November) was called “A New York Romance.” It was a suitable title, I suppose, as Dozier did touch quite a bit on his life in (and love for) New York City. But then …Read more

Rob Sutton’s recent Don’t Tell Mama show, “Not the Boy Next Door,” was not so much an autobiographical program as it was a deeply personal musical reverie on what it means to live an authentic, self-aware life. That theme was hinted at in the show’s …Read more

Other songbirds may warble sweeter notes than Brenda Braxton. Other raconteurs may spout wittier quips. But where rapport with an audience is concerned, Braxton is hard to beat. Braxton is, first and foremost, a good host—she knows how to share a mom …Read more

When singer-pianist Robyn McCorquodale claims that her career has taken her to all seven continents, you may wonder who, exactly, comprised her audience in Antarctica. Emperor penguins? It all makes better sense when she explains that she has worked …Read more

Arriving in New York in the very season when Bruce Jenner’s personal revelations have put questions about gender in the headlines, Viola di Mare is certainly timely. The monodrama, written and acted by Isabella Carloni, underscores the ways in which …Read more