Broadway Cabaret at Rittenhouse Grill is back for a third year

“The Rittenhouse Grill is closed on Mondays,” Swartz told me in a recent interview. “Broadway is also closed on Mondays.” Voila: Broadway Cabaret at Rittenhouse Grill was born.

Since its debut in 2024, the series has attracted some of Broadway’s leading lights, including Tony Award winners Christine Ebersole and John Lloyd Young; Stephanie Pope, the original Dorothy in The Wiz; and Philadelphia native (and forever Annie) Andrea McArdle. The program has also featured up-and-coming performers like Julie Benko, who earned acclaim after stepping into the recent Broadway revival of Funny Girl as Fanny Brice.

A cabaret renaissance?

Swartz grew up on Long Island and came to Philadelphia as an undergraduate at Penn. At a time when cabaret venues flourished in the city, he took advantage of the opportunities to experience great performers in relaxed settings. In recent decades, though, local cabaret offerings have dwindled significantly—a niche Swartz set out to fill with his series.

“I have always been a fan of cabaret,” Swartz said. “There has been a gap of many years where Philly didn’t have the kind of cabaret that we do: intimate, musical-theater Broadway cabaret.”

The current season opens on February 16 with a performance by Christine Andreas and Martin Silvestri. Andreas, who earned Tony nominations for Oklahoma! and On Your Toes, is a renowned song stylist, who’s performed internationally at clubs and cabarets around the world. Silvestri, her real-life husband of 35 years, is a sought-after composer, arranger, and pianist.

Behind the music of Love Is Good

Both singers have local roots. Silvestri is also a Germantown native who got his start at the former Neupauer Conservatory of Music. Andreas was born in Camden, New Jersey, and although she grew up mostly in New York State, she still feels a strong connection to the area.

“For me, it’s a bit like coming home,” Andreas said in a joint interview with Silvestri. “I know it’s certainly that way for Mart. You have very warm memories of a place, especially if you were born nearby. It’s the City of Brotherly and Sisterly Love, and you feel that on stage—the audiences there open their hearts to us, they never come in with a judgment.”

“I literally was born there and lived there until I went to New York at 21,” Silvestri added. “I was a musician from about the time I was five, and I started playing professionally with little bands around the time I was nine or ten. I got to have the feeling of what it was like to be a professional musician. I got to know Philadelphia through all the little rooms that are now gone. So many great singers and musicians have come out of Philadelphia.”

Andreas and Silvestri’s act for Broadway Cabaret at Rittenhouse Grill, entitled Love Is Good, tells of their musical and romantic partnership through song. “I always say that I fell in love with his music first, then I fell in love with him a few days later,” Andreas quipped.

A personal performance

Yet the intimate nature of their act extends beyond the material—it speaks to the type of experience that cabaret can provide, and what Swartz is hoping to once again make a Philadelphia mainstay.

“It’s a unique, shared community,” he said. “You can be seated with people you don’t know, and over the course of the evening, you leave as friends. Christine, with her fabulous voice and great personality, is going to be singing 10 or 15 feet away from you. And at the end of the show, you’ll find the performers talking or having a drink with audience members, up close and personal. You leave knowing them, in addition to being entertained.”

The Broadway Cabaret at Rittenhouse Square series continues with performances by Mandy Gonzalez (March 9-10), Max von Essen with Billy Stritch (April 20), and Beth Leavel (May 18).