There’s something special about seeing shows in the round, as opposed to facing performers the way you would in a regular theater or at the opera. The arrangement seems to add a 3-D effect, as if providing extra depth to our sense of vision. Suddenly we’re not mere spectators anymore, but potential participants. This is particularly acute at the seasonal spiegeltent that, for the past three years, has been erected right next to South Street Seaport (and the old Fulton Street fish market) in downtown Manhattan. The venue’s name comes from the Flemish term for “tent of mirrors”—and that’s exactly what it is. The hard-shell venue looks like a transplant from the 1920s (when its kind became popular in continental Europe, particularly the Netherlands and Belgium), which helps enhance the feeling of the audience being cut off from its pedestrian 2008 reality. Booths ring the outer perimeter, but clearly the place to be is on one of the chairs that surround the tiny stage. When the performers strut their stuff, you’re so close that you can see every little drop of perspiration on their brows, and almost feel their breath. And in the case of roller-skating duo the Willers, spinning at high velocity a mere inches from your head, it’s hard not to recoil in fear of getting hit by an errand wheel. Sorry, but you just can’t get that kind of physical thrill on YouTube. read more
Kander & Ebb may have set Cabaret in Weimar Berlin, but quoting from the show’s title song could not be more appropriate as we bid farewell to the long-running New York eatery Florent. Now, why should we mention the closing of a restaurant in this arts-focused blog? First, Florent always was a haven for creative nightowls; the chi-chi uptown crowd may have had Elaine’s and the likes, but the downtown people would get their steak-frites in a much more egalitarian setting. In addition, the departure of this beloved 24/7 institution, forced out by rising rents, is only the tip of the iceberg that is the gentrification of New York—or rather, it’s the latest ship to slam into that iceberg. And that of course is something with repercussions on how the city and its cultural scene interact. read more
The word “ethereal” is perhaps the adjective that comes to mind quickest when describing the voice of Maude Maggart, the 32-year-old who is a fast-rising singer of the Great American Songbook. But however you choose to characterize it, it’s the kind of voice that has critics from the New York Times to Time Out New York struggling to convey its particular beauty in words. From April 1 through May, she performs her latest cabaret show, “Speaking of Dreams,” in the Oak Room at the Algonquin.
Maggart’s renditions of 1920s-era songs like “Love for Sale” or “Love Me or Leave Me” uncannily evoke an earlier time, with their melancholy, yearning high notes, laced with a wispy, fast vibrato that makes her voice recognizable in an instant. She takes many standards at slower tempos—even “Happy Days Are Here Again,” recorded on her 2005 CD Look for the Silver Lining, often taken at march-like clip, is taken leisurely, as if from the wistful perspective of someone already looking back on happy days. Posted after the jump, you can hear her singing “Love Me or Leave Me” with John Boswell on piano from Look For The Silver Lining.
Maggart is the granddaughter of Millicent Greene, who performed in George White’s “Scandals” in the 1920s, and she is the daughter of musical theater performers Brandon Maggart and Diane McAfee. Her little sister is the singer/songwriter Fiona Apple. Just before one of her shows at the Oak Room, I spoke with Maggart about why she loves cabaret, her career, and her family.
On how she got started as a cabaret singer: I first heard Andrea Marcovicci when I was 16. My dad took me to the Gardenia [in California]. My life changed. read more
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