Petula Clark is best known as a singer, but on the basis of her cabaret show at Feinstein’s – her first such show in the city since the 1970s – I’d venture to say she’s even stronger as an actor and writer. Sure she’s won two Grammy Awards, and one of the evening’s high points is a beautifully sung “La Vie En Rose” (on which it should be noted, Petula accompanies herself gorgeously on piano).

But that “La Vie” is stunning in part because she so clearly acts, in both her singing and playing, the emotional story behind the song. And the very highest point of the evening is Clark’s reading of her own poem “The Theatre” – a refreshingly honest love letter to that art form. She prepares the audience for it very cleverly, comically anticipating their groans of “oh God, a poem”. Even though people generally think of Clark as as phenomenon of the 1960s, she in fact had been acting since her childhood in the 1940s, and that shines through.

The evening didn’t start out so promisingly, with Clark singing a terribly cheesy arrangement of Cole Porter’s “I Concentrate On You”. But then she went on to perform her chart-topping pop hits like “Downtown,” “I Know A Place” and “My Love,” generally in ways that were intriguingly more bluesy that the originals.

Even stronger though, were songs from her theatrical career from shows such as Sunset Boulevard, Blood Brothers and Finian’s Rainbow – these are where Petula, the committed actress, gave the most help to Petula the pop singer. All in all, this act is a pretty fun entry in New York’s cabaret world, and for someone who hasn’t done this kind of thing in decades, pretty damn good.

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Riotously funny “Dean of Drag” Lady Bunny doesn’t put limits on what she’s going to say or do in her new cabaret act “That Ain’t No Lady”; sure there are plenty of pre-planned numbers and videos – like her famous, zany Laugh-In style routines – but one of the great charms of this show is its spontaneity. Bunny is one of the smartest drag queens ever, and she is equally likely to launch into incisive political rants (my favorite parts of the show) or a steady stream of dick and poop jokes. She’s a powerful presence who also posses a terrific sense of when to keep it light. Girl knows just how to milk it!

She never stays in one mode for too long, and while she might go all stream of consciousness at certain points, she never quite seems to ramble. The Lady isn’t afraid of sentiment, but she’s not sappy – a heartfelt tribute to Amy Winehouse is followed by jokes about her death that are in the worst possible taste. It’s a terrific balance, and probably the only way you could tell those jokes in a way that’s funny rather that truly offensive. She does the same thing with Cher, praising her talent and drive just before satirizing her as the monstrous “Scare” in a wicked spoof of BURLESQUE.

In the same way that Varla Jean Merman does, Bunny covers her costume changes with her YouTube videos. These include her rap debut – “Watch your back, Cazwell!” she warns – in a parody of “Like A G6” turning it into an ode to uncircumcised men entitled “Like A Cheese Stick”. That’s the hilariously low level of most of this energetic, mostly-for-the-laughs winner – definitely the funniest gay show in town!

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Nadler packs over 61 songs and 61 newsworthy events into “Crazy 1961,” a celebration of the year of his birth. But Nadler doesn’t just shower us with random facts. There are always many layers in a Mark Nadler show, ranging from the obvious to unspoken subtext, which gives an “oomph” far, far beyond your typical cabaret show.

It doesn’t hurt that 1961 was, in fact, crazy: “The Music Man” and “Gypsy” ended long runs on Broadway while the Supremes made their first recording, Streisand her first television appearance, and Garland her legendary comeback at Carnegie Hall – Nadler points out that, for many of those reasons, it was a great year to be gay. This being one of Mark’s shows, that off-handed quip ends up reverberating in surprising ways.

The show evolves into a complex portrait of the exact place and time that Nadler was born, in exciting and ultimately moving ways. Every single song in the show is from 1961, and he finishes with a truly insane medley of fifty songs from the year. This is as giddily entertaining – and breathtakingly smart – as cabaret gets.

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While the show has a vague underlying theme – something to do with singers and songwriters that have inspired the two – mostly this show simply testifies to their ability, separately and together, to dig into a song and tell its story with detail and feeling. Cook finds some rich shadings in Irving Berlin’s “I Got Lost in His Arms” that most other singers miss. She also fully plays both the ruefulness and the celebration in “Here’s to Life”, where most singers would pick only one angle and stick with it.

Feinstein’s been truly blossoming as a singer in recent years. In the evening’s most moving moment, he delivers a passionate rendition of “Fifty Percent” that the lyricists Alan and Marilyn Bergman have altered slightly to change the character in the song from a newly widowed woman to a gay man. His heartfelt, textured reading of this clear-eyed yet ardent song goes from a gorgeously restrained, romantic beginning to rattling the rafters with an open-throated declaration of love at all costs. What can I say, it made me kvell. Go, Michael go!

This may not be particularly holiday themed, as Feinstein’s shows around this time of year have sometimes been. But this is, nonetheless, about as luscious as cabaret gets. Highly recommended.

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The Pizzarellis represent the very height of cabaret’s jazzier side, with profound musical intelligence at work. The combinations they make are more than apt, they’re positively elegant. Some of them are almost too sophisticated to make an impact in a live situation. Their intricate combination of James Taylor’s “Traffic Jam” with Joe Henderson’s “The Kicker” will probably reveal itself better on repeated listens on their upcoming CD.

More often, though, they are right on target. There’s an instantly moving, very satisfying “fire and ice” mash-up of Jessica soulfully singing Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” opposite John smoothly whispering Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “The Waters of March”. And then there’s the Allman Brothers rock instrumental “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” cooled down and sped up in the spirit of jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery, allowing John and the band to solo with vigor, verve and virtuosity – breathtaking.

Overall, the singing’s smart, the music’s deftly swung and the atmosphere sparkles. Cabaret doesn’t get much better than this.

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Her new show at Feinstein’s (until November 12), “The Best Of Times Is Now!” honors the legendary Broadway composer Jerry Herman on this 80th Birthday year, featuring songs from his shows, both hits and obscurities. Marilyn starred in Herman’s Hello, Dolly! many times – she was known as “the singing Dolly” for the simple reason that no-one else who played the role sang it with more musicality. She loves the show so much that she’s recorded an album including every song (by every character) from the Tony Award-winning score.

Herman’s songs bring out the showman in Maye, the high spirits spurring her on to high kicks. Musical director Tedd Firth brings a glossy, sophisticated jazz musicianship to the proceedings, providing a luscious frame for Maye’s multifarious artistry. Maye exquisitely tailors her style of singing to the individual song, smooth for the ballads, swinging for the standards, and truly gritty for the bluesier numbers.

Maye appeared on Johnny Carson’s edition of “The Tonight Show” a total of 76 times, a record not likely ever to be beaten by any other singer with any other host. If you love classic songs sung like they’re meant to be sung, it just doesn’t get any better than this.

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Holmes has been a Las Vegas performer for some time, but exhibits none of the negative qualities you associate with Vegas. He only has the good Vegas stuff: He is nothing if not sincere and authentic, and possesses a magnetic stage presence and a practiced but subtle showmanship that underlines what’s important in the show without overselling it.

The show itself is a heartfelt and well-researched musical tribute to Bobby Short, who appeared at the Carlyle for over thirty-five years (1968-2004), in the process becoming synonymous with New York sophistication. Holmes intersperses his song interpretations – which are reminiscent of Short without merely impersonating him – with the story of Short’s amazing life.

Holmes captures the full range of qualities that made Short a New York legend, from his roots as a “saloon singer” (best represented by Holmes’s raucous medley of the trashier side of Short’s repetoire: “Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer)” and “Truckin’”), to his more storied championship of the Great American Songbook (mostly represented with generous helpings of Cole Porter, a personal favorite of mine).

Short received wide fame in the late 1970s for singing in a TV ad (that also featured “Charlie’s Angels” star Shelly Hack) for the Revlon perfume “Charlie”. Holmes, tongue firmly in cheek, gives a rousing rendition of the jingle, that he then turns into a touching witty tribute to Short himself. At the other end of the spectrum Holmes finds the heartbreak in Rodgers & Hart’s “It Never Entered My Mind” more than any other singer I’ve heard before.

Holmes is backed by a group of crack musicians, some of whom had worked with Short. All in all, a class act, and first-rate cabaret.

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Betty Buckley’s newest cabaret act “Ah Men! The Boys of Broadway” is a well balanced and pleasing evening, that just gets better as it goes along. On opening night, when I saw it, Betty Lynn complained that it’s a bit unfair that the first night of a cabaret run is the night all the critics come – it’s also the performer’s first time performing it in front of an audience of any kind.

Betty needn’t have been concerned, though. She’s in very strong voice, and this evening of men’s songs from Broadway shows is a lot of fun. This sort of showtune gender-bending has become somewhat commonplace after the runaway success of Broadway Backwards, but Buckley goes a bit beyond the usual conceit, making a good case for actual gender-blind casting.

Buckley and her pianist/arranger Christian Jacob have done a terrific job of balancing ballads and uptempo numbers. However, somewhat unusually for Buckley, who can be one of the most profound and searching song interpreters around, not all of her interpretations are revelatory.

She plays Leonard Bernstein’s “Maria” very straight, singing it beautifully, but barely scratching the surface of what the song means. This from a woman who found shades and meanings in the Beatles’ “Blackbird” that not even Sir Paul McCartney himself could have imagined.

A little over halfway though the show, though, she sings a whip-smart, very funny specialty number about cross-gender casting called “A Hymn to Her”. From that point onward, she knocks every song out of the ballpark. Jacob’s arrangement of “Hey There” is truly dramatic and luscious, and Betty brings out the tender longing at the song’s heart like no-one before her. In general, Buckley’s return engagement at Feinstein’s finds her in fine frisky fettle!

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From November 2007:

At the very beginning of her current cabaret act at Feinstein’s at the Regency Chita Rivera, probably the most beloved living performer of Broadway’s Golden Age, opened by singing “I Won’t Dance” and proceeded to shimmy and shimmer her way through a very hot show. This is razzle-dazzle in the service of a great theatrical presence.

When she made her cabaret debut at Feinstein’s a few seasons back, Chita was holding back a bit, saving some stories and material for the Broadway show Chita Rivera: A Dancer’s Life. Since that show has finished its run and inspired a successful tour, this diva is free to cut loose, and that she does as only she can.

This edition of her cabaret show is one of the most sophisticated and developed acts of its kind. Her Broadway vehicle featured first-rate Broadway craftsmen giving Broadway royalty a vehicle that purred like a kitten. For this new club act, the always-canny Chita has taken the best of that show and combined it with the strongest elements of her earlier Feinstein’s experience.

She almost launches into “All That Jazz,” the most spectacular of her many signature numbers, no less than three times. When she finally does it as an encore, it’s more than satisfying, it’s positively gratifying.

A positive review is often the the hardest to write – the language of extreme dislike is much richer than the language of praise. If I’m falling short, it’s because this show almost never falters. About the worst I can say is that she didn’t sing the entirety of “America” from West Side Story. I am a Leonard Bernstein fanatic and “America” is one of my most beloved Bernstein songs. Chita sings the hell out of her “America” fragment, leaving someone like me begging for more. What can I do but spout critical clichés? At least I’m not lying!

There’s no denying that Melba Moore sings her freaking face off in her cabaret act at Cafe Carlyle. Most of the time that’s great, pure diva pleasure, but there are also a handful of times when all of those notes start to get in the way.

Moore is perhaps best remembered for her 1980s hit “You Stepped Into My Life”, but she started on Broadway, firstly in the original production of Hair and then another hit, Purlie, which earned her a Tony Award and rave reviews. She then went on to a career as a disco and r&b diva, and has just released a new r&b single “Love Is”, which she sings toward the show’s conclusion.

She sings “Love Is” with great simplicity and feeling, perhaps because she wants to make sure that this new song gets a hearing the way it was written. Earlier in the evening, however, she gets really flashy singing jazzy arrangements of standards. The show has a subtly chronological structure, going through the songs and artists that influenced Moore, to the songs she sang on Broadway, finishing up with her hits.

It’s revealing that, in tipping her hat to Ella Fitzgerald, Moore chooses to sing “Air Mail Special” Ella’s fastest, flashiest showpiece, rather than something more melodious from the songbooks, say Rodgers and Hart’s “Manhattan” (a song that would be a good fit at the swanky Carlyle). It’s as though Moore is out to prove something about her improvisational abilities and vocal range. Melba, we all know you can turn it out, you just don’t have do turn it out so hard on every song.

The fireworks work best on the standards, especially an impassioned “Stormy Weather” and the concluding “Lean On Me” (the Aretha Franklin song, not the Ben E. King one). All in all a very entertaining and slightly exhausting evening.

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