New York is often a great place to be on a Monday night.  True, the Broadway theaters are dark, but that’s exactly the reason you may catch a performer from a Broadway musical on stage at one on Manhattan’s cabaret venues.  Sure enough, Daniel Reichard used his night off from the hit, Jersey Boys, to bring his holiday cabaret show, Christmas in Black and White, to the Metropolitan Room. 

Reichard’s high spirits were reciprocated by the audience, and he was greeted with cheers as he came to the stage and joined his guitar, cello, violin, reeds and piano musicians.  Harking back to “a time before i-Pods and i-Phones, and when the big screen was at the movies,” he launched the proceedings with “White Christmas.”  Most of his songs were familiar standards, such as “S’Wonderful” and “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart,” but Reichard, a clear tenor and a good belter, injected a considerable amount of his own hi-octane fuel into his renditions. 

The show included a couple of guest vocalists, and a plant in the audience, a love-sick, love-starved female who eventually found her way to the stage.  A funny enough shtick, but this show was Reichard’s through and through.  He was charming and charismatic, with anecdotes and asides to punctuate his collection of Christmas melodies, plus a knowing nod to the next holiday with “Auld Lang Syne” and “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?”

For most in the audience, it wasn’t necessary to tie a ribbon around any box; Reichard was gift enough.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
December 17, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org