Broadway star Karen Mason was the first ever performer at New York’s Don’t Tell Mama, perhaps the best-known piano bar in all of Manhattan. That was in 1982. Thirty three years later she returned to the venue for a very special concert. She is now making that concert, Mason at Mama’s In March, available for streaming on her website.
The show prompted Stephen Holden, writing in the New York Times, to say, “Ms. Mason is utterly guileless…Her reappearance there 33 years later is a cabaret event tinged by sadness because in the years immediately following she lost many friends and collaborators in the AIDS epidemic.
“Ms. Mason has long since established herself as a much-decorated diva in the Barbra Streisand school of dramatic histrionics. For better and sometimes for worse, she wears her heart on her sleeve. Even when she pushes her bright, metallic voice beyond comfortable limits, there has never been any question about her sincerity.”
Mason first appeared on Broadway in the original production of Torch Song Trilogy. From there she went on to appear in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, Sunset Boulevard, Mamma Mia!, Hairspray and Wonderland. On tour she was most recently seen in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies.
When I interviewed Mason during the Pantages run of Love Never Dies, she told me what she enjoys most about her cabaret performances.
“I think when I do my cabaret it’s a little bit more of a personal statement. So I enjoy being able to relate to the people in the room with me. I relate to them as the person that I am. Even if that includes the anger, the frustration, the efficiency or the lack of efficiency…all of those things happen. It’s just that I’m a little bit more free with those emotions on a cabaret stage.”
Mason at Mama’s in March will be available on October 15th, 17th and 18th to stream for $15 from KarenMason.com.
Photo of Karen Mason courtesy her website.