This trans legend is among the most unique interpreters of song: she can go from tender vulnerablity to smirking irony to howling rage, sometimes in the same song. Her taste is impeccable, and she approaches her selections with the touch of a very careful curator. A curator, that is, who finds what is most explosive in the art they’re presenting, and then promptly detonates it. Justin Vivian Bond is a tower of song – mysterious, imposing, beautiful, powerful.

JVB’s current show “Oh Mary, It’s Spring!” is nothing more or less than a selection of songs about or written by women named Mary. To hear Bond tell it, she’s never been particularly good at remembering people’s names, and it has only gotten worse as she gets older (she celebrated her 59th birthday during the run). So she’s taken to calling everyone “Mary.” And why not!

Bond comes roaring out of the gate with The Association’s “Along Comes Mary”, all strut and swagger. In her version of Mary MacGregor’s “Torn Between Two Lovers” she comes out into the house and sings directly to more than two men in the audience (myself included the night I went), commenting afterwards “all that polyamorous queer love has my head spinning!”

JVB delivers a powerfully understated rendition of singer-songwrigter Mary Gauthier’s amazing “Mercy”, which Bond introduces with a story about her conflicted relationship with her late father. The song expands to encompass the mercy that country and life itself needs right now, which she delivers with controlled passion. Her version of Jimi Hendrix’s “The Wind Cries Mary” goes the opposite direction: she truly screams the lyric “the wind / screams Mary”, to great effect.

One of the best features of all of Bond’s shows is her acidly funny, stream of consciousness, between-song patter (which has had the downside of making certain shows marathon length, but not here). As always Bond is hilariously entertaining, wildly imaginative and vividly expressive. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

It’s no wonder John Lloyd Young was cast many moons ago in Jersey Boys to originate the role of Frankie Valli, in the process becoming the only American actor to win the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theater World Awards for a Broadway debut. He has one of the most mighty high tenors in all of musical theatre, paired with a falsetto which perhaps surpasses even Valli’s own in sheer power. He’s back at the Café Carlyle, where he just opened a new show for one short week.

Charismatic and still boyishly handsome in his mid-40s, Young still sings the Valli songs that made his name (he knows where his bread is buttered), but the remainder of his present act is satisfyingly eclectic. He burns through “Show And Tell”, the 1973 Jerry Fuller hit made famous by Al Wilson. He positively floats away in his version of The Stylistics’ “You are Everything”, paying homage to another great falsetto singer, Russell Thompkins, Jr. The evening’s most surprising number: “Ming Ri Tian Ya”, a Mandarin Chinese soundtrack ballad, telling a tragic story of love thwarted by death. Just the kind of “big sing” this son of Irish and Welsh melodrama loves to sing. Young, pardon the phrase, kills it. (He will be alternating it with other non-English songs throughout the run).

The only other musician on-stage, on piano and keyboards, is Tommy Faragher, a veteran songwriter (Taylor Dayne’s “With Every Beat of My Heart”) and Grammy-nominated producer (Glee‘s “Teenage Dream” featuring Darren Criss). He and Young wrote the break-up ballad “Cold Dawn Calling” – Young’s lyrics are not only emotional but also artfully wrought, and he sings them with an extra bit of heat. Faragher has a solo spot, doing a heartfelt cover of Sam Cooke’s “Bring It On Home to Me”. He does a more than creditable job, but I wish Young had sung backup on the call-and-response chorus. After all, Cooke’s backup singer was none other than the legendary Lou Rawls.

Young deliveres every note of every song with sophistication and passionate musical precision. He possesses an affable, assured presence, and displays a droll, disarming intelligence in his patter. Young relates “you never know who you are going to run into at the Carlyle Hotel,” revealing that Faragher had found himself at the bar sitting next to none other than Sir Paul McCartney. Young then launched into a blazing rendition of McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed”. And maybe I am. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.wordpress.com.

While she has always been an immensely talented singer, I feel like Dianna Agron’s current act at the Cafe Carlyle really finds her coming into her own. Agron applies her huskily golden yet liquid voice to some very “Carlyle” material, including Bobby Short’s “You Fascinate Me So” and Eartha Kitt’s “I Want To Be Evil”. When Agron goes after a song, she always acts the hell out of it, which makes her an exceptional interpreter and storyteller.

Folk rock, the meat of Agron’s first two shows at the Carlyle, is largely absent here, replaced by “songbook” and “soul,” both of which she excels at. She keeps breaking her own rules to put together a show that feels right; her baseline here is a show that is fun and pleasurable, and she has more than succeeded.

A couple of times she asked her band to take it back to the top. She seemed slightly embarrassed – Dianna I am here to tell you that one of the most gratifying experiences I have ever had in cabaret was when Keely Smith unashamedly said “no that wasn’t good, lets do it again.” Own your mistakes, and be proud of the artistry which compels you to be the best version of the song you are singing! No apologies!

That said, Agron is all-around more confident and in command, which lends her off-hand comments a raffish charm. No song was less than beautifully sung, and she performs best when a song brings out the actress in her – most notably “It’s Oh So Quiet” (orginated by Betty Hutton, and returned to fame in Björk’s cover version). Agron in every case gives us wonderfully sung renditions of dauntingly complex songs. Highly recommended.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.

Although he opened his act at the Cafe Carlyle with a Randy Newman song – and spent years fronting indie rock darlings The Walkmen – there’s something about every song Hamilton Leithauser sings that arcs toward Bob Dylan. When he sings quietly, it’s in a Dylansque talk-sing, but when he rocks out, it is clear that he has a much stronger voice than ol’ Bob ever did. His show is full of wonderful songs, but he has not yet figured out how to perform them in an intimate setting.

Leithauser’s lyrics tend toward the literate and witty, but it is difficult to hear them when he is singing to a back row that is many yards further than the Carlyle’s actual back row. To be clear, I am not one of those critics who goes “rock music is too loud”: I grew up on punk and post-punk. But literally read the room. David Johansen, Judy Collins and Joan Osborne – all big room fillers for decades – all have successfully done so. And in every case with strong nods to Dylan (is the Carlyle trying to book Bob? It would be oddly perfect).

Also, Leithauser openly said he was telling the short version of several songs’ backstories. That’s misunderstanding what cabaret is about – this is a place for talking and storytelling. Tell the long version. On the plus side, Leithauser’s lyrics often surprise and conjure evocative images. Mostly the songs break towards hope, but with a rueful awareness of the difficulties life puts in your way. While it is definitely a work in progress, I still recommended this.

For tickets, click here.

To learn about Jonathan Warman’s directing work, see jonathanwarman.com.