FastFilms on Fast Track to Fabulous Success

In this modern age of the Webseries and broadcasting oneself, only a mere handful really rise to the top and gain a quickly-growing following with seemingly no fanfare (these include Jack in a Box and Submissions Only). To this group must be added FastFilms, a series of short black-and-white movies released with a speedy vocal [...]

The Music of McNight Continues Brilliantly

By now it’s no secret that cabaret goddess Sharon McNight always has another show to do somewhere; this weekend, audiences in Los Angeles will be treated to her latest one-woman offering A Night With McNight at the M Bar, 1253 Vine Street at the corner of Fountain Avenue, on Friday the 29th and Saturday the [...]

Hail! Hail! Kat’s Gang’s All Here…at the Plaza!!

By the time it closed in 1975, the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel had featured a luminous roster of stars on its stage over the decades; these included Liberace, Carol Channing, Burl Ives, Eddy Duchin, Kitty Carlisle, the Mills Brothers, Bob Fosse, Victor Borge, Marge and Gower Champion, Eddie Fisher, Xavier Cugat, the McGuire [...]

Forever Kirsten! From “Breakfast in Bed” to “Dinner with Dusty”

The opus of Dusty Springfield has always occupied a special place in the cabaret arena; Heidi Mollenhauer was known for her exquisite rendering of “You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me,” while a staple of Joel Silberman’s act was the original Italian, “Io Che Non Vivo.” Even this past season, chanteuse Kim Grogg executed [...]

Drew’s Friendship Folio Volume #1: Annie Hughes

Since I’m only just finding my way again in terms of self-publishing, and realizing that while it’s not necessarily important to keep to a stringent schedule at the beginning as opposed to simply grinding out as much content as I can that’s important to my sense of personal expression, the thought grabbed me to start [...]

Thirteen Months Later, Cabaret Still Misses the Feat of Clai

It’s uncanny, and also somewhat surrealistically sad, to think that cabaret legend Claiborne Cary has been gone from the earthly plane for over a year. After shuffling off her mortal coil in March of 2010 at the age of seventy-eight, following complications from Parkinson’s disease, she is still one of the most sorely missed among [...]

2011 MAC Awards. Who Will Win? But Who SHOULD Win?

OK, look. Last year I was writing for a certain website and I happened to float the suggestion of my doing a little article of a prediction piece about the MAC Awards, i.e. who would win and why. I wrote it, it was published, and it caused this enormous controversy over nothing. But on the [...]

Swinging Sting is the Stuff of Loar

When Broadway personality Rosemary Loar first chose to descend upon cabaret in the late 1980s, it was clear that the two were a match made in heaven. At the time, she was appearing in the original Broadway cast of Chess, not long after brilliantly understudying actresses Maureen Anderman and Carol Androsky in the classic Kaufman [...]

Tell Marilyn I LOVE her!!!

Many people think they know or know of Marilyn Michaels. They truly and honestly think they do know or know of  her. They DO know that she was really launched upon the public as Fanny Brice in the first national tour of Funny Girl, and they know that the bulk of her career has been [...]

Creighton Continues Commanding Creative “Jack”-Pot

The very first unofficial “Web series” was produced in 1995, by a company called Bullseye Art; three years later they scored a nearly-overnight success with the animated program Miss Muffy and the Muf Mob. The Internet was still brand-new at the time, and the idea of YouTube as a means to broadcast oneself was merely [...]