Shows starring
Sharon McNight
Sharon McNight
Artist Bio
Sharon McNight made her Broadway debut in 1989 in Starmites, creating the role of Diva. She received a Tony Award nomination as "Best Leading Actress in a Musical" for her performance, and is the recipient of the coveted Theatre World Award for "Outstanding Broadway Debut" which was presented to her by Carol Channing. New York Magazine's John Simon said "Sharon McNight is a winner" and Al Hirschfeld did a caricature of her.
Her current project is "Betty, Betty, Bette" , celebrating the screen legends Grable, Hutton and Davis. She has six solo recordings to her credit. The most recent is "Offensive Too, Volume Two" which is the second CD of "Songs To Offend Almost Everyone", a throwback to the party records of the 50's. In contrast is "The Sophie Tucker Songbook", which contains the music of the one- woman show based the show business legend. "The Sophie Tucker Songbook" debuted at New York's Rainbow & Stars as part of an ASCAP Sunday night showcase March 1996.
Since then, she developed it into a one-woman musical, Red Hot Mama, which was workshopped at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Lucille Lortell's White Barn Theatre, and has finished a successful three month run Off-Broadway at the York Theatre.
The Singer/Comedienne's regional credits include Amanda McBroom's "Heartbeats" at the Pasadena Playhouse, and an award winning Dolly in "Hello Dolly" at the Peninsula Civic Light Opera (a role she repeated in her hometown, Modesto). Sharon was Sister Hubert in Nunsense in Los Angeles and San Francisco, where she received the Bay Area Critics Circle Award for "Best Performance in a Musical". She is the narrator of the
documentary, "There That Night," the story of the Provincetown, Massachusetts fire, and was featured in the recent A & E documentary, "It's Burlesque", for her research on Mae West and Sophie Tucker. She is a master teacher on the faculty of the Yale Cabaret Symposium.
In San Francisco, she plays The Plush Room, Great American Music Hall, and anywhere else the check doesn't bounce. She has played from the Moose Hall to Carnegie Hall, from Los Angeles to Berlin. She has won six San Francisco Cabaret Gold awards, 3 Cable Car Awards, a MAC award, a Bistro award, and received a Nightlife award from New York's critics for her Best Musical Comedy show, "Ladies Compose Yourselves!" Her eclectic repertory ranges from blues to country to good old fashioned entertainment. The Los Angeles Times called her "one of the great wonders of the musical stage." She is most noted for her movie reenactment of The Wizard of OZ and for being one of the few real women to impersonate Bette Davis.
Ms. McNight received her Masters of Arts degree in direction from San Francisco State College in nineteen none of your business. As an only child, her parents kept her busy with all kinds of lessons: ballet, tap, hula, social dancing, flute and piano. She is single and resides in Hollywood, but "lives" in San Francisco. She has been in the forefront in the fight against AIDS since the early eighties, and was featured in Randy Shilt's book, And The Band Played On. She was chosen twice as the honorary chair of the San Francisco AIDS Emergency Fund, and was one of two heterosexual women chosen as the Grand Marshall of San Francisco's Gay Day Parade.
She says the greatest day of her life was the day she quit smoking.
Reviews and Quotes
"McNight continues to be one of the wonders of the musical stage." LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Sharon's got other ghosts in her persona---Mae West, Eartha Kitt, Bette Davis---and she wraps them around her core and emerges with a many-sided singer-comedienne of seemingly limitless vocal stamina." NEW YORK POST
"A consummate entertainer, she's the best in the business. . . one of cabaret's ultimate divas,
she can boast a cult status rivaled by few."
John Hoglund BACKSTAGE
"She is the Robin Williams of Cabaret."
Scott Alarik, BOSTON GLOBE
"Sharon McNight is a winner!"
John Simon, NEW YORK MAGAZINE
"If you haven't yet seen McNight, you're missing stardom incarnate."
Bob Harrington, BACKSTAGE
"Sharon McNight is power-packed!"
Mel Gussow, NEW YORK TIMES
"She's funnier and gutsier than ever. Isn't there anything this woman can't do!. . . with a technique that will touch you one moment and bring you to your knees with laughter the next. "
Kallie McRae, SAN FRANCISCO BAY TIMES
Specialties
Popular Vocalist
Genre
Broadway comedy comedy music