Lindsay Mendez, who has appeared on Broadway in Godspell and Significant Other, and made her mark Off-Broadway as star of the Pasek & Paul musical Dogfight, will introduce her new cabaret show, which she describes as personal “love letter to Broadway,” for four performances in September at Feinstein’s/54 Below.
Her show will consist of “golden age Broadway favorites you’ve never heard her sing, beloved tunes from her collaborations with current musical theatre writers, and more.” She told Playbill, “My material tells a story about where I come from and why I’m here now. I’ve done a lot of [cabaret style] shows in the past. I felt like this was the opportunity to come out and focus on what I really love and why I wanted to start doing all of this in the first place.”
She will perform September 12, 14, 15, and 16, all at 7 PM.
In May, Mendez made her Encores! series debut as Helen, the character based on Helen of Troy, in a concert performance of the musical The Golden Apple. Mendez made her Broadway debut as a replacement Elphaba in Wicked, and earned Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama League award nominations for her performance in Dogfight.
In recent months she took part in workshop productions of new musicals The Talented Mr. Ripley and Rick Elice’s This Ain’t No Disco.
Mendez, whose Broadway credits include a star turn as a replacement Elphaba in Wicked, held back on naming song titles for the upcoming engagement, but teased the kind of material she will be doing. “There will be a Stephen Schwartz song from one of his other shows. And I'll be singing something from A Chorus Line [because] Marvin Hamlisch is super inspirational for me. I will definitely include one of the songs I did in Dogfight. There will also be some Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler material—all the women who made me. It will definitely be eclectic, including some songs that people have not heard for a long time, or maybe never heard before. Over the years I feel I have done so many beautiful songs, I want to go back and do some of them again.
“I have a major love for musical theatre, including a lot of stuff I don't get to do very often. Appearing in The Golden Apple this spring reignited my passion for that. I'm going to include at least one or two songs from the 1920s, but I’ll hover a lot in the 1950s area. I think I belong there in a past life.”
Mendez confessed, “I’ve always been afraid to do a solo show. When I go to see the great solo shows of Liz Callaway or Christine Ebersole, they have so many incredible stories to talk about and their material and lives are so rich. I’ve always worried that my life was not rich enough. But I’ve gathered my courage, put together some material, and decided that, OK, I have some stuff to say, and a huge canon of songs I love and am excited to share with friends. I like it and I think they will too.”
Tickets for the cabaret show cost $40–$85, plus a $25 food and beverage minimum. Click here to order tickets.
Mendez, Ebersole, and Callaway have all been special guest performers on Playbill’s Broadway on the High Seas cruises. Cabins are available for Broadway on the Rhine River cruise August 13-20, 2017, featuring Seth Rudetsky, Andréa Burns, Faith Prince, Terrence Mann, Charlotte d’Amboise, and Santino Fontana.
Playbill Travel is also booking Broadway on the Danube River with Michael Feinstein for November 3-13, 2017, also featuring Julia Murney, Christopher Fitzgerald, Marc Kudisch, Christopher Sieber, Brandon Uranowitz, and Rudetsky, as well as other exciting talent to be announced.
Tickets are also now on sale for Playbill’s Broadway on the High Seas July 2018 cruise to Iceland, accompanied by Judy Kuhn, Christine Ebersole, Rob McClure, Jarrod Spector, and Sierra Boggess. Visit PlaybillTravel.com for booking and information.
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