Rian Keating: MileStone: 65

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Rian Keating

MileStone: 65

Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, October 10, 2025

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

Rian Keating
Photo by Stephen Mosher

Rian Keating returned to Don’t Tell Mama for another evening of great stories interspersed with well-chosen songs. The cause for celebration was his 65th birthday, as well as his upcoming retirement from a 30-year career as a high school teacher. With his trademark charm, quiet wit, and heartfelt sincerity, he kept the audience enthralled with the complicated story of his life journey.

Keating, with his limited vocal range, concentrates on songs that have poetic lyrics, which he invests with great meaning. He opened and closed with Mary Chapin-Carpenter’s “The Moon and St. Christopher,” and other poetic songwriters he included were Amanda McBroom, Oscar Hammerstein II, and his beloved Jacques Brel. Brel’s “Sons of” was given emotional weight by tying the lyrics into the age of AIDS. That segment of the show also featured the emotional “He Must Be Beautiful” (Jamie Vandenberg/Janis Ian).

Earlier, Keating as storyteller livened things up by telling his battle in high school to escape shop classes and take up cooking instead, memorialized with the spirited “I Can Cook Too (Leonard Bernstein/Betty Comden & Adolph Green). His discovery of New York City as a young gay man was linked to sensitive interpretations of “When I Fall in Love” (Edward Heyman/Victor Young) and “Penthouse Serenade” (Will Jensen/Val Burton).

The final segment of the evening was devoted to recreations of some of his class assignments. These challenges forced his students to not just memorize facts, but to actually think and process. and these examples proved why Keating was such a beloved teacher. He sang to the audience as he did to his charges such diffuse numbers as McBroom’s “Ophelia” and “Baby in a Box,” and a touching pairing of “The Last Time I Saw Paris” (Hammerstein/Jerome Kern)—happily following the lyricist’s command to sing the number spritely and not sadly—and “London Pride” (Noël Coward). School may be out soon, but Keating’s lessons will live on as long as his students are active.

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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 & Noble, 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."