Otto Walberg

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Otto Walberg

Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, June 15, 2023

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

Otto Walberg

Otto Walberg finally made his long-delayed cabaret debut at Don’t Tell Mama, and it was a pure delight. His song list ranged from Irving Berlin to Stephen Sondheim, with some surprises thrown in for great fun. He offered an appealingly flexible tenor along with a great talent for storytelling. He shared tales of his life using just the right tinge of sentiment to balance his humor. When the material required a gravity and deeper emotions, he was ready with them as well. He has obviously been well-guided by his director, the cabaret master Mark Nadler, and he had fine support from music director Seth Weinstein.

Walberg’s charm was evident from the beginning of the show. He serenaded various audience members as he made his entrance from the back of the house singing “Isn’t It a Pity” in a sweetly playful manner. When he reached the stage, he launched into a medley of “You Stepped Out of a Dream” and “Getting to Know Me”; the revised lyrics were an exercise in out-of-control tongue-in-cheek egotism. The audience was totally charmed.
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He followed this, showing great sincerity, with the lovely “The Nearness of You,” gently offered with some lovely top notes. Walberg’s relaxation brought the audience closer to him, and he emerged as a cabaret star.

There was one misstep during the evening: “Shall We Join the Ladies?” (Marshall Baer/David Ross), was an outlandish comedy number that is better suited to director Nadler’s go-for-broke on-stage energy than Walberg’s more folksy approach. The comic highlight of the show was a lengthy tale of childhood show-biz aspirations, and his competition with a classmate, and his dealing with a recalcitrant raccoon cap. All this was wrapped around a treacly old number, “Old Shep.” Again, this logically led to a tremendous shift in mood to Sondheim’s “I Remember,” delivered with intense specificity as he shifted through the many images contained within the lyrics.

Walberg also shone with sensitive versions of “No One Is Alone” and the bittersweet “Some Other Time,” and charmed us with an extended version of “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” that had some rarely heard verses. As a debut show, this was a very strong appearance replete with abundant charm, wit, and intelligence—a great combination for introducing himself to the cabaret world.
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It will be a pleasure to see what he does next.

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Bart Greenberg

Bart Greenberg first discovered cabaret a few weeks after arriving in New York City by seeing Julie Wilson and William Roy performing Stephen Sondheim and Cole Porter outdoors at Rockefeller Center. It was instant love for both Ms. Wilson and the art form. Some years later, he was given the opportunity to create his own series of cabaret shows while working at Tower Records. "Any Wednesday" was born, a weekly half-hour performance by a singer promoting a new CD release. Ann Hampton Callaway launched the series. When Tower shut down, Bart was lucky to move the program across the street to Barnes & Nobel, where it thrived under the generous support of the company. The series received both The MAC Board of Directors Award and The Bistro Award. Some of the performers who took part in "Any Wednesday" include Barbara Fasano and Eric Comstock, Tony Desare, Andrea Marcovicci, Carole Bufford, the Karens, Akers, Mason and Oberlin, and Julie Wilson. Privately, Greenberg is happily married to writer/photographer Mark Wallis, who as a performance artist in his native England gathered a major following as "I Am Cereal Killer."