So ... is life still a cabaret?

IN the Cafe Carlyle, at Madison Avenue level in the luxury hotel of the same name, time used to stand still. At least, so it seemed as long as Bobby Short -- landmark and tourist attraction -- was around to scatter cool, jaunty stardust on Gershwin, Porter or Rodgers and Hart.

Short constituted a peculiarly Manhattan phenomenon. His reign at the Carlyle lasted 36 seasons, 20 weeks a year. Last December, at age 80, he was still packing the room. In March, suddenly, the party was over. Days after learning that he had leukemia, he was gone. Unceremoniously, the 21st century had arrived.

Now what?

Cabaret stars are not extinct -- though it’s hard to escape the feeling that the Carlyle is living on borrowed time.

Lately Eartha Kitt, ageless at 78, was transfixing front-row patrons with her basilisk stare, lending a feral growl to the blithe cynicism of “Just an Old-Fashioned Girl,” the sensual perfume of “Lilac Wine” and more than a dozen of her old standbys.

Before that, there was Barbara Cook, 77, Broadway royalty, adding an hour’s worth of new material to her repertoire in a bittersweet yet radiant tribute to Short and to Wally Harper, her longtime partner in song, who died in October.

In September, the acerbic Elaine Stritch, 80, a resident of the hotel, is due to start descending nightly for the first cabaret act of her life. Maria Friedman, 45, a star of London’s West End, was invited in on the strength of endorsement from Cook and Stephen Sondheim. Otherwise, the Carlyle has shown little initiative in cultivating younger talent.

The four-time Tony winner Audra McDonald, anyone? (She’s a baby; just 35.)

Happily for artists hitting their stride in their 30s and 40s, Cafe Carlyle is not the only game in town; two other hotels run rooms in the same league.

The Oak Room occupies a long, dark shoebox in the Algonquin. At the Regency, it’s Feinstein’s, edged with showbiz glitz and named for Michael, the star entertainer who also wears the hat of impresario. In many respects, the three rooms are remarkably alike. The capacities range within hailing distance of 100; all offer full bar and dinner service but little elbowroom.

At this echelon, Manhattan cabaret is definitely not for the kids. For one thing, there’s the emotional texture, the aura of confidences shared, the affective shorthand of hearts no longer in the first flush of youth. For another, there’s the tab, with entertainment charges running from $50 to $95 for a one-hour show (often on top of a steep minimum).

Piano bars in the Village and the West 40s charge more affordable prices, but you wouldn’t recognize the names of the talent. Downtown, there’s Joe’s Pub, at the New York Public Theater, named in honor of its founder, Joe Papp, who would have loved the anything-goes bookings, from unplugged Bach by Matt Haimovitz to the edgy German chanteuse Ute Lemper doing her voodoo on Elvis Costello and Tom Waits.

Feinstein’s is no less eclectic. One of its founder’s main goals for his room at the Regency was to create an atmosphere that was “not stuffy.”

“There’s a perception of cabaret as being rarefied air,” Feinstein remarks. “There are places that are like that, and I can’t abide them.”

His programming offers a smart assortment of old-timers (Keely Smith of Louis Prima and Las Vegas fame), TV personalities of marginal musical interest (Danny Aiello, Tony Danza, Susan Lucci), and serious artists who hone the American songbook with the craft a Renee Fleming lavishes on Richard Strauss (Ann Hampton Callaway, Maureen McGovern, Cleo Laine).

Going the Carlyle one better, Feinstein has even bagged Kitty Carlisle Hart. Last September, Hart -- widow of Moss, the raped Lucretia of the American premiere of the Benjamin Britten opera, costar with the Marx Brothers and original panelist on “To Tell the Truth” -- marked her 94th birthday with an act at Feinstein’s, causing a sensation. Watch for the encore on the occasion of her 95th.

Experiencing such talents up close is well worth the price of admission -- if the talent can handle the intimacy. “It’s not for everyone,” Feinstein observes. “It takes extraordinary showmanship and an ability to connect in a small setting. Some Broadway stars won’t do it. They’re afraid to be themselves, without the protection of the fourth wall.”

Then there are those who thrive on the challenge. Patti LuPone shines at Feinstein’s, her brassy showbiz persona intact (she sits on bald men’s laps), yet revealing as well a miniaturist’s delicacy of nuance.

The indestructible Chita Rivera made a triumphant nightclub debut last winter, following on the heels of Brian Stokes Mitchell, another newcomer on the nightclub scene.

Lately of “Kiss Me, Kate” (which won him the Tony for best actor in a musical) and “Man of La Mancha,” the star they call Stokes introduced himself with his lovingly constructed and flawlessly executed act “Love/Life,” which promptly transferred to the Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center on dark nights for “The Light in the Piazza.” On small stage or large, it was one of the most memorable evenings of the New York season.

Not just eminences grises

Like the Carlyle, the Oak Room takes a purist approach to cabaret, but it is also hospitable to untested talent, as the Carlyle is not. Andrea Marcovicci made a name for herself here. Peter Cincotti, who deserved the showcase, got one here at 19 before taking off like a shot. The Francophile Karen Akers, with the bones of a gazelle and the bangs of Cleopatra, was no unknown when the Algonquin began to book her; but now she is a fixture, lending her material a dry Gallic wit that does not so much preclude passion as set it in sharp relief.

Having caused a well-deserved flurry in the mid-’90s (and his mid-20s), the precocious Aussie balladeer and occasional rocker David Campbell of Adelaide now makes the Oak Room his home away from Oz. It was amazing back then what wells of private emotion Campbell could draw even from so apparently carefree a tune as “Alexander’s Ragtime Band.” He’ll be back in September, no doubt with fresh surprises.

The latest to claim his place among the Oak Room regulars is Jack Donahue. (On Aug. 23 and 24, he plays the Catalina Bar & Grill in Hollywood.) Originally presented at the Algonquin on Valentine’s Day for one night only, Donahue was quickly invited back for two weeks in June.

Fan Dominick Dunne of Vanity Fair turned out for the opening. En route to the stage, Donahue gave Dunne a hello and a handshake, next confessing to the microphone that singing to people he knows makes him nervous.

Not that you would have guessed. From the first song -- Eden Ahbez’s “Nature Boy,” beginning in a wordless whisper, embellished by incantatory arabesques, also wordless but crystal clear in the narrative of a brief, hallucinatory encounter -- Donahue responded to melody and lyrics with the same air of sensual surrender.

Elsewhere, he found occasion to be brisk (“Let’s Take a Walk Around the Block”), rueful (“The Night We Called It a Day”) and whimsical (“If I Only Had a Brain,” one of his few familiar numbers). He ad libs well too, an incidental prerequisite for the job.

“It’s always midnight at the Oak Room,” Donahue noted late in the set, easing into another song. In cabaret, yes, it comes back to this: Time does stand still. Bobby Short’s gone, but look again. The night is young.