David Andrako

Chita Rivera at the Café Carlyle

May 22, 2016

She ran down the list of her Broadway co-stars: Ricardo Montalban, Donald O’Connor (the disastrous Bring Back Birdie), Antonio Banderas (upon whose shoulder she placed a shapely leg in Nine) and, her admitted favorite, Dick Van Dyke, with whom she co-starred in "Bye Bye Birdie" from which she sang “A Lot of Livin’ To Do” giving it a sassy, winking interpretation making it impossible to deny that the title is very on the mark. It wouldn’t be a Chita Rivera show without a mention of her iconic Anita in "West Side Story." A meeting with Leonard Bernstein to go over her songs just after she had been cast was nerve-wracking as she never had considered herself a singer. History has proved that her singing almost equals her dancing. “A Boy Like That” and “America,” complete with some mini-choreography were nothing short of electrifying. [more]

Another Son of Venezuela

April 22, 2016

Dynamic performer Migguel Anggelo exhilaratingly recalls the showmanship of Desi Arnaz and the performance art of Klaus Nomi in his terrific autobiographical cabaret act, "Another Son of Venezuela," that has the razzle dazzle of a Bob Fosse production. [more]

Joan Osborne – Songs of Bob Dylan

March 12, 2016

Most people have difficulty imagining Bob Dylan as anything but the down-and-out troubadour singing for his supper in Greenwich Village nightspots in the early Sixties. He is, in fact, an incredibly prolific, sophisticated writer and Ms. Osborne slid easily from his country/western tinged ballads (“Tonight I’ll be Staying Here with You”) to his scathing, but clear-eyed philosophy of the world (“Gotta Serve Somebody”) to his tender love songs (“Forever Young”) and on to his Christian evangelical period (“Saved”). [more]

Broadway Close Up: William Finn

October 29, 2015

Two veterans of the most recent revival of On the Town were splendid interpreters of Finn’s songs. First, Stephen DeRosa conjured a second-rate out-of-town production of "March of the Falsettos" populated by egos and amateurs. He sang “The Baseball Game” brilliantly-and schizophrenically—taking on each character of this bitingly satirical song. Later he sang the scathing, sexually explicit “Republicans” in which a liberal gets even with a Republican in an unprintable way. Then his colleague Alysha Umphress sang a rousing “Set Those Sails” ("In Trousers") and “Change” ("A New Brain"), both songs dealing differently with moving on. Ms. Umphress’s “Song of the Full Refrigerator,” about the temptations of food—“eat first and get depressed later”—was scarily right on the money. [more]