By Andrew Poretz***Jazz-pop singer and composer, Roberta Donnay, with her Prohibition Mob Band, made her recent Chelsea Table+Stage debut with song selections comprised of well-known Tin Pan Alley jazz standards, as well as obscure, sometimes bawdy blues songs of the Prohibition era.
The sultry redhead spent a dozen years touring and recording as one of Dan Hicks’ “Hot Licks.” In this current band, she portrays herself as a character based on the “Jazz Age” female singers of the 1920s, and influenced by film noir gun molls, complete with a back story and a “Brooklyn” accent.
Donnay and the band appear like an old jazz painting come to life, dressed in vintage clothing styles. About the only things missing from this verisimilitude are the dangling cigarettes and wafting smoke that permeated every jazz joint back then. The lineup of musicians included three from her last New York appearance (2021 at Birdland Theater), with Darren Johnston on trumpet, Sam Bevan on bass and David Gibson on drums, as well as Anthony Wonsey on piano and Willy Applewhite on trombone.
The band opened with a fine instrumental of “So Long Blues” before the star took the stage for “Squeeze Me,” a 1925 Fats Waller tune made famous by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith. Several years ago, Donnay recorded a delightful album of songs associated with Armstrong entitled, My Heart Belongs to Satchmo.
Donnay led the band in a fast 4/4 rendition of “Sweet Georgia Brown” (perhaps known best today as the theme song of the exhibition basketball team, Harlem Globetrotters). The playful, conversational solos of Darren Johnston’s trumpet and Willy Applewhite’s trombone would be a hallmark of the set. The star here set up her character as an abandoned baby on a Canarsie doorstep. (A friend asked if this was true, a testament to Donnay’s acting ability.)
A great bit of fun was had with another 
Louis Armstrong tune, “Old Man Mose.” Donnay had recorded this funny song for her Satchmo album, a tune about finding a man apparently dead in his home after knocking on his door. Here, she teaches everyone the band’s call-and-response part for some audience participation.
“‘Cause I believe (Old Man), I do believe (Old Man)
Yeah I believe (Old Man), that Old Man Mose is dead,
I believe (Old Man), I do believe (Old Man)
Yeah I believe (Old Man), that Old Man Mose is dead.”
No Roberta Donnay show is complete without a song by Sippie Wallace, a groundbreaking female blues singer and songwriter of the 1920s. For this outing, it was “Mama’s Gone, Goodbye,” a bluesy number sung in Donnay’s sultriest voice.
The band’s rendition of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” (a tune with some controversy in that Fats Waller may have sold the tune to composer Jimmy McHugh for some quick cash) replicated some of the original Tommy Dorsey 
arrangement. Donnay’s rendition offered a fine job with the optimistic lyrics of Dorothy Fields—another groundbreaking songwriter.
For a bolero arrangement of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” Roberta invited singer Kay Kostopoulos to the stage to dance with castanets, Greek style, while the star sang. Their interplay served as a delicious palate cleanser. If one is to have their dreams broken, having these two marvelous performers around is a good fix.
Ms. Donnay closed out her terrific set with a pair of well-known jazz standards, first with one of this reviewer’s personal favorite songs, “Bye Bye Blackbird,” and finished strong with a unique, hot take on “I’ve Got a Right to Sing the Blues.” Drummer David Gibson juxtaposed a noirish beat over a standard rhythm, and the star sang it with passion and verve.
