The best cabaret shows in NYC this month

Talented singers from the Broadway and cabaret worlds sing side by side in this monthly dive into the fathomless depths of the late musical-theater deity Stephen Sondheim. Guests at the March 30 episode include Ramona Mallory, Daniel May, Orville Mendoza, Shereen Pimentel, Jim Poulos, James Seol and Lucia Spina. The saucy Rob Maitner plays host, and music director John Fischer is at the piano. 

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.

Mosher is one of those talents you need to see to believe: warm, funny, biting, ferociously committed. In her biweekly series—now held at the Green Room 42 after years at Birdland—she invites a gaggle of performers from Broadway and beyond to show their talents. Guests at the April 1 edition include Melissa Errico, Marieann Meringolo, Lennie Watts, Q. Smith, David Marino, Bryce Edwards, Diva La Marr, Darnell White, the Drinkwater Brothers and the ageless lounge lizard Kenn Boisinger. 

Founded in 2016, New York City's EPIC Players—the acronym stands for Empower, Perform, Include, Create—is a nonprofit theater company that provides opportunities and communities for neurodivergent and disabled performers. In a pair of cabaret shows at Joe's Pub on April 2, performers from the troupe sing numbers from the Broadway roles they'd most like to play. (EPIC will also be appearing at Lincoln Center on April 12 as part of this year's Big Umbrella Festival.)

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.

Lorna Luft and Andrea McArdle have both been stars since they were children: Luft as the talented oldest daughter of Judy Garland, McArdle as the copper-haired, big-belting moppet in Broadway's original Annie. ("Tomorrow" belongs to her.) They teamed up for a show at 54 Below in December, and now they reunite for an encore. 

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.

Good grief! French hornist and performance artist Kyra Sims and writer-performer Mara Wilson—yes, the former child star of Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire—host a multifaceted variety show dedicated to creative works on the subject of sorrow. The mourning glories include comedic storytelling by Gastor Almonte, burlesque by Iris Explosion, live art by painter Katie Kuzin and cartoonist Alex Krokus, and music by Matt Ray, Darian Donovan Thomas, violinist Concetta Abbate and pianist Adam Tendler. 

It turns out that Jeff Daniels—the star of films both bittersweet (Terms of Endearment) and salty (Dumb & Dumber)—has been writing bluesy ditties on the side. For 25 years, in fact! Tonight he shares a range of them, along with appealingly self-effacing stories from his show-business career.