Porchlight Music Theatre
(Porchlight Music Theatre Website)

Presents
MACABARET
At
Theatre Building Chicago
(Theatre Building Chicago Website)
1225 W. Belmont
Chicago, Illinois 60657
773-327-5252

October 22 to November 1, 2009

L. Walter Stearns: Artistic Director
Jonathan Heuring: Managing Director

Rob Hartmann: Music
Scott Keys: Lyrics
L. Walter Stearns: Director
Danny Bernardo: Co-Director
Eugene Dizon: Musical Director
Tom King Clear: Assistant Musical Director
Christie Kerr: Choreographer
William Morey: Costume Designer
Gary Echelmeyer: Lighting Designer
Kathy Mountz: Stage Manager
Christopher Boyd: Operations Associate
Kate Hughes, Noreen Heron & Associates: Public Relations

Featuring:
Virginia Brazier, Cameron Brune,
Heather Townsend, Rachel Quinn,
Stephen Rader, Eugene Dizon

Susan Weinrebe
October 22, 2009

Oh, Death, where is thy sting? Apparently nowhere to be found in the cabaret comedy Macabaret, about passing on to the other side. Five actors accompanied by pianist, Eugene Dizon, sing and dance their way through numbers appropriately Halloween ghoulish but surprisingly fun and funny, given their subject matter. And it all starts, with not one, but four bodies under sheets in, if not the library like in the board game Clue, at least in a cozy cabaret setting.

Opening with a couple of corny lines: “I made a grave mistake,” or, “I cried a river…Styx over you,” the motley crew of dead spirits settles into a music and dance revue that begins, of course, by greeting the audience with a song, tipping its hat to the theme tune of Cabaret. Note should be made that this musical stresses the “macabre” part of the pronunciation.

Taking a page from vaudeville, placards proclaim the theme of song sets with such topics as “Love Bites.” The actors pull out some canes and hats and soft shoe steps to start the show. It only takes a song or two before one is used to the idea that the performers are really shades, the singing and dancing dead, come back from the land of no report to plead their cases and tell their stories.

There’s the alphabet song where every set of letters that pertains to death is rounded up into lyric stew: “RIP, I blew away your DNA.” In the sultry “ghost of a chance” torch number, Rachel Quinn slithers all over a spotlighted chair, à la Liza Minelli. Even dead, she’s still almost too sexy for her song.

A lilting duet hops on the eco movement wagon, “I’m going green all the way as I bio decay”, sold by the lithe grace of Heather Townsend who manages to turn “Ewwww” into “Wow!” There’s a send up of the latest vampire craze phenomenon and a vampire husband’s jealousy of the “Twilight” heartthrob, Robert Pattinson, and his wife’s interrogation as to his whereabouts. “Where were you last night?”…“Just out with the boys, flying around.” Drum roll.

As any revue should, Macabaret keeps the pace clipping. There is the Andrews Sisters-type number about the boogey, woogey Boogeyman; a stock but still surprising number with Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde with Cameron Brune half costumed as a mad scientist and half nun; an old-fashioned hairy dog tale, except in this show, it’s a hairy werewolf tale told with effective up lighting on Stephen Rader’s face; a calypso number, “keep your skeletons in the closet,” and much, much more.

But the show stopping number, the cleverest hoot of all, was the solo by Virginia Brazier. Dressed in a black velvet party frock and looking like a little girl, the disconnect between her pale blond innocent appearance and going into her “possessed” state was the best parody of the show.

Macabaret is not a show for kids. There is PG and R material, but that only makes it all the more fun for the grown-ups.

"Macabaret" at Porchlight
Rachel Quinn, Stephen Rader,
Cameron Brune, Heather Townsend,
Virginia Brazier
Courtesy of Porchlight Music Theatre

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For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net