At an age when many are content to settle into retirement, Elvira Tortora is just getting started — on stage, under the spotlight, and telling the story of a life that defies convention. Her critically acclaimed one-woman cabaret show, The Bookmaker’s Daughter, makes its way to The Parlor in Narrowsburg this weekend, offering audiences a heartfelt, humorous, and musically rich journey through her unconventional Brooklyn childhood and beyond.
Tortora, who grew up in Brooklyn with her sister and their parents — including a father who was a neighborhood bookmaker — draws on a lifetime of stories, seamlessly weaving them with a repertoire of songs ranging from Bobby Vinton’s “Blue Velvet” to Luther Vandross’ “Dance With My Father.”
“I grew up in a not-so-traditional home,” Tortora says. “But there was so much love, and the music I sing helps bring those memories to life.”
After a long career in the fashion industry, Tortora returned to her first passion — singing — in her early 60s, discovering a welcoming community in New York’s vibrant cabaret scene. “I didn’t know anything about cabaret,” she says, “but it gave me a space to sing songs that told stories. So I started writing patter — short stories from my life — and choosing songs that matched.”
Those efforts blossomed into The Bookmaker’s Daughter, a full-length cabaret memoir that premiered at the iconic Don’t Tell Mama in Manhattan and is now hitting the road. The show has garnered a Bistro Award and a MAC nomination — honors that, Tortora admits, she never imagined receiving at this stage of life.
“On my 70th birthday, I was performing in a cabaret club on West 46th Street,” she recalls. “At 26, that was the dream. And it took until 70, but I did it.”
The show spans decades — musically and emotionally — from Tortora’s eighth-grade graduation gift (a night at the Latin Quarter to see Bobby Vinton) to her second marriage at 46. Along the way, she pays homage to greats like Stephen Sondheim and Richard Rodgers, infusing each number with personal resonance.
Audience reactions have been deeply moving, Tortora says. “Even people who didn’t grow up anything like I did — no Brooklyn, no bookie dad — still connect. They find their own memories in my stories.”
And now, she’s bringing those stories closer to home — to her second home, in fact. Tortora owns a house in Lackawaxen, PA, and when friends there asked her to bring the show upstate, she obliged. This weekend’s performances in Narrowsburg mark an expansion of her tour and a full-circle moment: her sister, a retired teacher from nearby Wawarsing, will see the show alongside many locals.
For anyone considering a creative leap later in life, Tortora offers simple but powerful advice: “Just do it. Paint, act, quilt — whatever it is, don’t wait. I waited a long time, but I made it happen. And so can you.”
Image: Elvira Tortora appears in “The Bookmaker’s Daughter” May 16 and 17 at The Parlor in Narrowsburg, NY. (Credit: ElivraTortora.com)