Reviews

Nicole Henry

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Love Songs With Power, Not Heartache.

Although jazz and pop-soul singing have always been stylistic first cousins, the line between them has never been fuzzier than it is today. In the voice of Nicole Henry, the gifted Florida singer who during the past year has become one of the top attractions at the Metropolitan Room, the two are practically synonymous.

Ms. Henry, who gave a Valentine’s weekend performance on Saturday to a packed house at the club, tilts a little more toward jazz. Her singing is free of the flowery melismas that became a ubiquitous pop cliché in the 1990s and threatened to turn singing into a mindless gymnastic exercise. Her sound is also devoid of the kind of scat improvisations that many ambitious jazz singers unfortunately feel obligated to shoehorn into their performances to certify a usually bogus kinship with Ella Fitzgerald.

Baby Jane Dexter

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Baby Jane Dexter ~ Photo Richard Termine for The New York Times Baby Jane Dexter, a singer with a mighty contralto, makes a persuasive case for uncovering new meanings in songs by wielding lyrics like blunt instruments. There is no beating around the bush for this longtime cabaret performer, whose new show at the Metropolitan Room is aptly named “All About Love” because it covers so many aspects. Her interpretations of everything from Bob Dylan to Rodgers and Hammerstein have the force of body blows.

Jason Graae

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

A vaudevillian spark plug flashing mischief, Jason Graae did a bit of everything in his show, “Magically Delicious,” at the Metropolitan Room on Saturday. Now 51 and living in Los Angeles, he is a resilient singing clown who has bounced from theater to nightclubs to television to commercials and back, compiling a résumé that serves as a storehouse of zany, lightweight shtick.

Jason Graae in his act, “Magically Delicious,” at the Metropolitan Room on Saturday.

An entertainer who for five years gave voice to Lucky the Leprechaun for Lucky Charms cereal, Mr. Graae has a keen sense of the absurd that a less ebullient performer might milk for bittersweet pathos. But Mr. Graae, accompanied here by the pianist Alex Rybeck, plays it happy-go-lucky, portraying his struggle as one big silly adventure.

Jason Danieley

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Like Sitting on a Back Porch Somewhere in the Heartland

Daniely190 Bet you didn’t know that the world’s largest ketchup bottle (a 170-foot-tall water tower) is in Collinsville, Ill., near St. Louis. Nor were you aware that it is the favorite roadside attraction of the Broadway tenor Jason Danieley.

Every theater star comes from somewhere, usually not New York. As a sideline to his theatrical career, Mr. Danieley, who grew up in St. Louis, channels his abiding affection for vintage heartland sounds into an acoustic band, the Frontier Heroes, that translates popular standards into a plain rural style he calls “back-porch Americana.” It is similar to what Willie Nelson does.

All About Ira Gershwin: ’S Encyclopedic

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Mark Nadler ~ Photo: Jessica Ebelhar for the NY Times

For some performers, everything old will always be brand new. The singer and pianist Mark Nadler, for one, imparts vintage musical theater lore with the bursting enthusiasm of a newsboy waving the headlines and shouting, “Extra, extra, read all about it!”

Mark Nadler performing "... His Lovely Wife Ira," his cabaret show about Ira Gershwin, on Thursday night at the Metropolitan Room

Mercer ... the Maye Way

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

As Marilyn Maye threaded her way from the stage through a packed house of cheering admirers at the Metropolitan Room at the end of Friday’s opening-night performance of “Mercer ... the Maye Way,” I overheard comparisons to Judy Garland’s 1961 concert at Carnegie Hall.

Hyperbole? Perhaps. I wasn’t at Carnegie Hall 48 years ago, but I know the recording from that performance, on which you can sense a similar electric connection between singer and audience. Suffice it to say that Ms. Maye came across during the nearly 2-hour, 35-song show as the embodiment and summation of a brash sock-it-to-’em nightclub tradition that runs from Garland through Bette Midler, but with jazz added.

Mercer the Maye Way

By Rex Reed

After a 16-year hiatus, marvelous singer Marilyn Maye made a New York comeback in 2006, and it’s been full steam ahead ever since. Back at the Metropolitan Room through June 21, celebrating the great lyricist Johnny Mercer, she’s a valid one-woman reason to make a trip to New York. In this staggering show, she serves 35 Mercer tunes, spiced up with her own brand of Tabasco, and punches them out of the ring faster than Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling.

Anne Steele

By Barbara Leavy

This is it: Anne Steele’s prize for winning this past summer’s MetroStar competition, which started with a pool of more than one hundred hopefuls. Her show, Strings Attached, was produced by the Metropolitan Room and given a five-day run. Since but few days remain to the run, it seemed more important to post this review quickly than ruminate about what should be said about this unusual and striking show.

To put it succinctly, go see and hear Anne Steele! The show makes quite obvious why Anne was the winner of MetroStar.

Eric Michael Gillett

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

In the corners of our hearts aren’t we all secretly and forever teenagers? The singer Eric Michael Gillett is the first to admit that he is 57 going on 17.

At the beginning of his new cabaret show, “Best of My Love,” at the Metropolitan Room on Friday, he declared that 40 years ago he watched Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet” again and again and each time “cried like a baby.” Since then, “I’ve kept my standards,” he said. “I’ve just lowered my expectations.”

Baby Jane Dexter

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

Songs of Speculation, Found in Unlikely Places

To hear Baby Jane Dexter, a cabaret singer with a mountainous contralto, plow into the early-’90s R.E.M. hit “Everybody Hurts” is to rediscover a rock ballad transformed into an all-purpose anthem in the mode of inspirational war horses like “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” The plain-spoken emotional directness of that ballad makes it something of an anomaly in the catalog of R.E.M., a band known for elliptical lyrics and droning melodies.