The best cabaret shows in NYC this month

A Fabergé radical—beautiful, ridiculous and full of hidden tricks—the sublimely freakish Taylor Mac pilots audiences through fantastical journeys, guided by the compass of his magnetic individuality. In the culmination of a five-year project, the writer-performer famously surveyed the past 250 years of American music in a 24-hour marathon that was immediately hailed as a history-making event in and of itself. Mac's weekly April shows at Pangea are workshops of a all-new show that invites audiences to sing along with original songs written during the dark days of the Covid pandemic.

PJ Adzima, who currently plays the hopeful but hopelessly repressed Elder McKinley in Broadway's The Book of Mormon, hosts a neovaudevillian monthly variety show at the Slipper Room that proffers an eclectic mix of musical-theater, comedy, drag, circus and burlesque performances. A down-and-dirtier version of the show also plays there every week on Saturdays at midnight.

Part cabaret, part piano bar and part social set, Cast Party offers a chance to hear rising and established talents step up to the microphone (backed by the slap and tickle of Steve Doyle on bass and Billy Stritch at the ivories, plus the bang of Daniel Glass on drums). The waggish Caruso presides as host.

He’s worked with Liza Minnelli, Kylie Minogue and just about every downtown act in NYC. Now composer, pianist and performer Lance Horne hosts his own wild night of singing, drinking and dancing, strip-teasing and bad behavior at the East Village nightlife hub Club Cumming. Expect advanced show-tune geekery and appearances by Broadway stars looking to get down by the piano. Plan to sleep in on Tuesday.

Maye’s stellar past includes a string of classy RCA albums in the ’60s and countless Tonight Show appearances, but this husky-voiced, earthy belter still sounds great at the age of 96—and she turns 97 on April 10, toward the start of her two week run at 54 below. Beyond her remarkable energy and musical acuity, the astonishing Maye has a bone-deep comfort that imbues familiar songs with fresh simplicity, truthfulness and power.    

The longtime New York entertainer, drag performer and political activist Marti Gould Cummings hosts a new weekly late-night talk show at Red Eye, joined by different guests from the theater world each week and Yaz Fukuoka at the piano. The series kicks off this month with an impressive roster of interviewees: Broadway soprano Ali Ewoldt (April 2), songwriters Stephen Trask and Our Lady J (April 9), musical comedian Cat Cohen (April 16), silver-voiced leading lady Melissa Errico (April 23) and masked country star turned Cabaret emcee Orville Peck (April 30).

Disco enthusiast Aviva Zafrin amassed more than 150k followers on TikTok with her high-spirited disco riffs, so she's taking the next logical step to fame for someone in her early 20s: cabaret! So far, it's going pretty well—this is her sixth solo show at Joe's Pub. 

A Broadway-pop hybrid, Eric Michael Krop (Godspell) has a sweet voice that is capable of scaling astonishing heights. It's been a decade since his last solo show, but he's returning to celebrate his first 39th birthday at the Green Room 42 with a set of joyful hits by modern divas like Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Sia, Rihanna and Pink, plus a couple of originals. Musical director Max Mulready leads the back-up band. 

Recovering Broadway actor John Hill, an original Hairspray nice kid and Boy from Oz heel, has matured into a comedian and muscle-daddy Instathot; his résumé includes a long and fruitful collaboration with Bravo macher Andy Cohen, first as a producer of Watch What Happens: Live! and now as Cohen's daily radio cohost on SiriusXM. He also knows how to put an entertaining club act together (as he has often helped do for Natalie Joy Johnson). In his latest visit to the Green Room 42, he shares acid-edged dispatches about gay dating, sober living and reality TV, studded with sometimes naughty original comedic songs.

Few singers have the sheer macho swagger of Lea DeLaria, who rose to fame as a butcher-than-thou stand-up comic and Broadway star, and more recently earned new fans as Big Boo on Orange Is the New Black. As a jazz vocalist, she has tough-guy sell and a penchant for scat. In her monthly brunch set at 54 Below, she tackles Great American Songbook standards and showtunes by such upper-echelon writers as Stephen Sondheim, Michael John LaChiusa and Kander and Ebb.