If I were a comedian, I’m not sure if I would want to appear on “The Line-Up,” the Tuesday night variety series at the Birdland Theater. Producer Susie Mosher is an overwhelming host and emcee, not only larger than life but a kind of comedy-music juggernaut.

She starts each week’s show with an opening routine that’s at once a stream-of-consciousness stand-up monologue and an epic one-woman production number. An accompanying trio (pianist Andy Ezrin, bassist John Miller, drummer Ray Marchica) follows her adroitly with chords and rhythm. 

Ms. Mosher is very loud, very funny, very in-your-face, very personal: She drags you into her space while getting all up into yours. You’d have to be very secure in your laugh-getting prowess to want to follow her.  

Fortunately, Ms. Mosher knows well how to make the stage a safe haven for the rest of the performers, and that’s by taking the fall herself. She calls herself out on every aspect of her life — her body, her face, her parents, her queerness, her relationships, her career, her age, her status as a middle-aged mother of a 2-year-old — and grinds it all into fodder for laughs.  

She even makes fun of her own presence as the host of this show: “My opening number bores me to tears,” she sings, expressing a view shared by no one else in the room, “I wish that I could shoot flames out my rear.”  (That’s one of the cleaner couplets of the evening.)

For most of the program, Ms. Mosher is constantly interacting: not only with the performers but with much of the audience. Don’t sit in the front row unless you want to engage in a dialogue with her at some point.  Most of this interaction is designed to make her guest stars look good: tell us something, she asks, that will make this crowd love you.

Tuesday night’s show was a particularly strong one, serving as a preview of the Mabel Mercer Foundation’s 33rd Annual Cabaret Convention, which is taking place through Friday evening at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall. The formidable veteran entertainer who heads the foundation, KT Sullivan, and her family were the focus of much of the set. Her brother, Tim Sullivan, drew big laughs with an original, country-styled story song about “The Big V,” which concerned a specific surgical procedure and an equally specific portion of the male anatomy. This became a running joke.

Ms. Sullivan, accompanying herself at the piano (as she now does on Friday evenings at the Algonquin), turned in a whisperingly intimate rendition of Noel Coward’s “Sail Away,” in which the operative term became introspection rather than bravura.  Her mother, Elizabeth Sullivan, then took the piano and the two, coming across like sisters, dueted on an original, “Midnight at Mabel’s,” inspired by cabaret doyen Mabel Mercer but composed more in the form of a madrigal than a saloon song.

The first act was Meaghan Sands in full on “Ursula” drag — a slinky octopus dress with rubber arms protruding from all sides — seductively belting out “Poor Unfortunate Souls.” She made it seem as if Bertolt Brecht had written “The Little Mermaid,” complete with “Pirate Jenny” vamp.   

If Ms. Sands’s performance was agreeably oversized, Maude Maggart went small, with “Teeny Tiny,” written by Marshall Barer for Kaye Ballard, the smaller-than-life story of a microscopic love affair gone wrong. A longtime mainstay of the long-gone Oak Room at the Algonquin, the California-based Ms. Maggart’s New York appearances are rare (two shows this Saturday at Don’t Tell Mama’s are already sold out), but she remains one of the major cabaret talents of our time.

There were also two mano-a-mano acts, starting with Nicolas King and Seth Sikes, with pianist Jon Weber. The two essayed a snazzy, intricate, and very uptempo arrangement of Bobby Darin and Johnny Mercer’s “Two of A Kind” artfully expanded to include quotes from “Bosom Buddies,” “You’ve Got a Friend in Me,” and others along that line. Mr. King is a virtuoso vocalist who somehow inherited the razor sharp rhythm, intonation, and even the physical stature of the late Mel Torme; he does so much on stage that there’s not much left for anyone else, but I’m still curious to see their duet show (Saturday at the Green Room). 

The other was the song-and-dance man Luke Hawkins with pianist Matt Baker doing “42nd Street.” This team combines modern jazz with taps à la the one-off Fred Astaire/Oscar Peterson collaboration; this was another flashy and exuberant act that I hope to see more of.

The other artists were youngsters, mostly recipients of MMF scholarship awards, the youngest being Elias Javier, a 15-year-old singer-pianist who pounded out a relatively restrained rendition of “Great Balls of Fire.” Ava Nicole Frances delivered a well-constructed medley of “Oz” songs of different generations, “Over the Rainbow” and “Home” — I was especially impressed when it seemed like she was going to end subtly and quietly, though she switched to the usual big belt finale at the very end. Katelyn Myers absolutely nailed “What’ll I Do” (also with the verse) with a pitch-perfect, thoughtfully understated performance of Irving Berlin’s hundred-year-old waltz.

As always, Susie Mosher held it all together with characteristic generosity to everyone there. Not every week’s installment of “The Line-Up” is as totally successful as this one, but some of them are, and that’s kind of the point.