Sally Mayes
Post Office Café and Cabaret, Provincetown, MA, June 11, 2026
Reviewed by John Amodeo
You can’t find and won’t find a better cabaret entertainer than Sally Mayes. Is that hyperbole? I think not. She may have come from the musical-theater world (a Tony nomination for She Loves Me), but for the last 30 years, she has also been a fixture in the cabaret world, both as a performer and a mentor, and the cabaret world is better off for it. The CabaretFest 2026 audience got proof of this on June 11, when Mayes graced the stage at Provincetown’s Post Office Café and Cabaret with a mix of songs that each had a story attached. Luckily, Mayes is one of the best storytellers there is, with her honeyed southern accent, sharp wit, and having grown up in a household where family members routinely told stories around the dinner table.
Mayes’ vocal range may have become slightly contracted these days, but her pitch and interval navigation had a surgeon’s precision, and her phrasing was as fine as cut crystal. This was especially evident in her pairing of Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s “The Best Is Yet to Come” and “You Fascinate Me So.” Cleverly, she inserted a bit of wry humor with a strategic pause on the line “my inability to…concentrate.”
Mayes has always mined the jazzy vein in songs whenever she could, which showed in several numbers. Her opening, “Cloudburst” (Leroy Kirkland/Jimmy Harris/Jon Hendricks), was a vocalese extravaganza with a surprise “call and response” scat interlude with Nicolas King who, without warning and to everyone’s amusement, began singing with Mayes from his seat in the house. Her impressive scatting continued in Beckie Menzie’s “Do That Metropolitan Scat,” in which she mixed her jazz and operatic voice to humorous effect.
That rapier sharp wit and comic timing that Mayes wields so well was used abundantly here, beginning with Carol Hall’s “It’s Only a Broken Heart” that hilariously listed all the ways in which life can be worse than a romantic breakup. Musical director/pianist Tom LaMark sizzled during his musical interlude, absolutely crushing the Tex Arnold arrangement. “Viagra in the Waters” (Camille West), about an unfortunate truck accident that landed 30,000 lbs. of Viagra in a small town’s water supply with comically awkward consequences, was a rib-tickling tour-de-force for Mayes. I’ve been known to credit a singer for turning a song into a one-act play, but Mayes actually performed a one-act play…in seven minutes, with a side-splitting journey through “Shopping Cart of Love,” a hysterical Christine Lavin song. Mayes introduced this song in her cabaret show The Story Hour, which she recorded live at Joe’s Pub, a recording a true cabaret lover cannot be without. It was a joy to watch her perform this on stage.
When it comes to matters of the heart, Mayes was riveting, especially in two songs she wrote for her own musical called Contradiction of the Southern Soul. The first was a touching song about a girl grieving for her mom as she cleans out her house called “Like a Child.” The second was a country-pop-styled ballad inspired by her husband Bob called “Somebody Sent Me an Angel.” Mayes had the room completely enthralled with this sweet romantic song. When she reached her penultimate number, “I Don’t Want to Be Unknown” (Gary Burr/Aimee Mayo), in which a recent widow recounts her biggest fear, Mayes’ poignant immersion into the song took the rapt audience willingly along with her.
Some performers are fortunate enough to have a signature song, and Mayes has one, “Miss Byrd,” with which she created a sensation in the Off-Broadway production of Richard Maltby Jr.’s and David Shire’s Closer Than Ever. This was her encore and she left us tingling with delight, as only a master of musical storytelling could.
