Marissa Mulder & Bill Zeffiro

You Can’t Make Old Friends

Don’t Tell Mama, NYC, February 1, 2026

Reviewed by Bart Greenberg

They just seemed to be having a good time. Marissa Mulder and Bill Zeffiro actually seemed to be good friends, unlike some singers and pianists who seem to have met five minutes before the show. That they often referenced their age gap just made their teasing more personal and playful. If their bantering was scripted, you could never tell it from the audience’s response. As they offered a great mix of solos and duets in their new show, You Can’t Make Old Friends, they took the audience along on a fun ride. As they asserted in their opening number, they are truly “Two of a Kind” (Walden Cassotto/Johnny Mercer).

Mulder brought a great warmth and an emotional stillness to her ballads, which included “The Way You Look Tonight” (Dorothy Fields/Jerome Kern) and “Make You Feel My Love” (Bob Dylan). Zeffiro provided lush and playful accompaniments for both these numbers and as he did for others throughout the show. Of course, he got to perform his own solos, such as his own composition of “I’ve Still Got New York,” which demonstrated his skill as a vocal stylist. His partner in music gushed afterwards, “That was really good.” Later in the show, he offered a show-stopping version of “Home Sweet Heaven” (Noël Coward/Hugh Martin/Timothy Gray), and told us the backstage story of how it came to be.

Other delights followed, ranging from the silly to the sublime. Has anyone heard the song “Life’s a Trippy Thing” (Howard Greenfield/Linda Laurie)? It was a duet for Frank and Nancy Sinatra, and it falls somewhere between weird and terrible. The merry duo had fun with it before they segued into the far more successful recording for that father/daughter pair, “Something Stupid” (Carson Parks). “How About You?” (Burton Lane/Ralph Freed) was given a contemporary revamp in its lyrics, but it retained the bouncy fun of the original. and Mulder’s solo on “As Time Goes By” (Herman Hupfeld) was sheer romantic perfection. Sometimes songs you feel you never need to hear again can become fresh and alive when they are performed by the right singer. Mulder and Zeffiro have that magic touch.