The cabaret stage has been all the better recently for the creative partnership of Barbara Bleier and Austin Pendleton, two veterans of show business who craft standing-room only shows, with musical director Paul Greenwood and the guiding hand of director Barbara Maier Gustern. Pendleton is well-known as an actor, director and playwright. He made his New York debut in Oh Dad, Poor Dad… by 
Arthur Kopit and his Broadway debut in Fiddler on the Roof, both directed by Jerome Robbins. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play for the 1981 revival of The Little Foxes and Off-Broadway, he won an Obie Award for The Last Sweet Days of Isaac. There’s much more, of course!
Barbara Bleier is an accomplished actress, singer and author who made her Carnegie Hall debut at age four. She’s traveled the world of cabaret/film/theater over several decades and just recently has released her first single—Leonard Cohen’s “A Thousand Kisses Deep,” with Paul Greenwood on piano and co-arranged by both. The song was recorded at Pangea during the Bits & Pieces show in 2020.
Upcoming, at Don’t Tell Mama, Pendleton and Bleier will present their new show, Barbara and Austin Sing Steve and Oscar on Sundays March 13, 27 and April 3.
NiteLife Exchange (NLE) asks Barbara Bleier (BB) and Austin Pendleton (AP) Six Questions:
NLE: What’s you process? How does a Bleier-Pendleton show come together?
BB: A variety of ways. Sometimes we’ll just be hanging and joking around, and one of us says, apropos of a remark, “That would be a great idea for a cabaret”. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t! Or, we’ll be talking about a composer, the state of the world or a personal issue, and one of us will say, “That would make a great show”. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes it evolves into something else. We love finding music…recalling songs we love, and finding new ones…and friends who are wonderful composers have been so generous in sending us, and giving us permission to sing their unpublished songs. Sometimes the songs shape the show.
AP: Barbara selects the themes for our shows. I am inept at that. Well, once in a while…..this new cabaret Barbara and Austin Sing Steve and Oscar. I think — I may be delusional — that in this moment when many cabaret artists are doing cabarets about the works of the magnificent Steve — Sondheim, of course — that maybe not everybody knows that, as a young man from a troubled family in Doylestown, Pa., he would walk up the road to where Oscar Hammerstein lived. And talk to Oscar about writing musicals. Oscar had just written Oklahoma!. And Oscar would counsel Steve. Steve would write a show and Oscar would tear it apart and teach him about how the inner structures of musicals would work. Oscar — it always seemed to me (and to other people) helped Steve through a harrowing period in his life and threw a door open to him that led him into his extraordinary life in art. So I think it was my idea that our upcoming cabaret should have songs some of which would be by Steve and some by Oscar. Again, I may be delusional. Maybe one of my brilliant collaborators thought up that idea.
NLE: Is it smooth sailing or do you have rough spots along the way?
BB: We occasionally lock horns with one another, our director, Barbara Maier Gustern, and our Music Director, Paul Greenwood, but something good almost always comes out of it.
AP: We lock horns, at which time some of the smoothest sailing takes place.
NLE: How did the two of you come to collaborate and work together?
BB: To my recollection, somewhere around 2000, I was booked to do a solo cabaret, and I wanted to do a duet from Maltby & Shire’s Closer Than Ever. In a stroke of genius, it occurred to me to ask Austin to do the duet with me. His answer was something to the effect of, “You’re offering me ONE song?” I countered with, “Would you like half a show?,” and the rest is history. We did that cabaret for several runs in NY and Chicago, and sang with one another once in a while through the years. Then, I suggested a cabaret around 2016, and we had such a good time that we’ve been doing about three new ones a year since then.
AP: As I recall, Barbara came to me in — I think it was 2016 — and said, “let’s do a cabaret.” So we did. And people liked it. So we kept on doing them. Maybe, like, two or three brand new cabarets per year. Ever since.
NLE: Do you have a favorite of your many shows?
BB: Truth is, each one is my favorite, while we’re working on and performing it.
AP: Every one of them, as we do it, is my favorite. I tend away from getting nostalgic over previous cabarets (or previous plays I’ve been in either, or movies). It tends to take me right out of the moment.
NLE: What can the audience most expect from your new show, …Sing Steve and Oscar? And what about that butter knife and stalking?
BB: If we share it now, it will be a spoiler for the show!
AP: I forget the Incident of the Butter Knife. And the stalking. Clearly I have blocked these traumas.
NLE: What’s ahead? Are there future shows in the wind for you?
BB: We have somewhere around a dozen ideas for future cabaret collaborations. We really love working with one another, and with our team, and hope that our audiences enjoy our collaborations as much as we do. And, there are so many wonderful songs out there to sing, and themes to explore!
AP: We have a strong idea for our next cabaret, which tongs would not pry from me.
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