My soul is fed with spiritual food, of the theatre kind! I’ve always done theatre as a kid and young adult, way back in Ocean City, NJ and Philadelphia, PA. When I moved out here to Colorado, I left the theatre troupe behind and figured I’d work on the grind of living here in the mountains. On the outside, I had it all. A house, a husband, a beautiful daughter, a career, time to golf and ski, a rocking bod, the works! But something was missing, and I finally figured it out after Singletree local Lauren Bonati (and fellow soprano) kept pestering me to audition for a local theatre production and use my talents as an opera-trained soprano from the East Coast. I have to admit, besides shocking people when I sang them happy birthday and making up silly songs for my daughter in the car, I hadn’t performed since 2007, so the cobwebs in my throat were as established as Congress. I ended up landing a role and performing in the Vail Valley Theatre Company’s (VVTC) production of Cabaret at Chasing Rabbits in Vail from July 16-21st, and it saved my life!

 

I didn’t jump into it right away, however. Even those of us with great experience in performing feel a little shy after 15 years, so VVTC offers seasonal choir and dancing classes for only $50 for 5 sessions through partners at Colorado Mountain College. Starting in January of 2024, I struck up the courage to ask my husband if I could go sing with other theatre types, and he figured he could parent by himself at least one night a week so off I went!  The rest, they say, is history.

 

After being praised for my vocal talent and adorable personal skills, I built up the hutzpah to audition for the summer production of Cabaret, directed by Battle Mountain High School’s Art Teacher David Mayer. Now, let’s do some background. I have never watched Cabaret, nor did I understand the marrow of the message in this elusive musical. It certainly wasn’t on the 8-tracks and recorded tapes my father played of Broadways Greatest Hits throughout my childhood from the audio room. Yes, I’m that old, we had a whole area of the living room dedicated to the most current line of audio equipment. Now, my parents just have an Alexa. The reverberations, sadly, aren’t the same.  

 

It says a lot about a musical to claim that Cabaret came into my life and dug out the rotted innards of my Being and filled them with light. After all, I performed in La Boheme with Opera Philadelphia, and I never felt such raptured torture in the portrayal of the delicacies of human existence as I did with Cabaret. Maybe it’s because I am older and wiser now, and the pain of loss and betrayal are known to me intimately as I create a character that bears their scars as a badge of proof that they were here, that they mattered, that life is beautiful. Not only did I prove to myself that I can rise and reign under pressure, but I also learned skills within the globe of theatre uncharted throughout my repertoire.   

 

For those that don’t know, Cabaret is a musical that tells the story of the lives of performers and people surrounding a raunchy nightclub in Berlin during the rise of fascism in 1930. Kind of like a very depressing and definitely not romantic version of Love Actually, where the storyline focuses on two leads and follows a few rivulets of background characters over the course of about 6 months of their lives as everything they know and trust about the world falls to bits.

 

Written by Joe Masteroff in 1966, it’s known as a more realistic than artistic rendition of the true world of the 1920-30s sex clubs scattered throughout the un-tethered post-war inflation-burdened fledgling nation of Germany. That’s a lot of hyphenations, but I do that on purpose.  The entire production is itself a hybridic commotion of the social fluctuations and ambiguous (dare I say ambisexual) cloud that hung over the fledgling nation at the time, and as a cast member, I harbored compassion for the true historical drama that played out. It’s understandable that a nation burdened by losing a war they thought they’d win, taxed with reparations by all the other nations, and falling into apparent chaos with all of Europe’s “freaks and deviants” coming to live freely within the lack of governmental controls over societal norms, would eventually fall to a reactionary fascist Nazi government within that decade.

 

Cabaret starts with a raunchy traditional kick-line filled with Kit Kat Klub Girls & Boys strutting their stuff in bustiers and lace panties and an M.C. who bulldozes your senses and sexual appetites into complacency that you are just in the audience for an experience, for an evening, for a thrill. You would be proven wrong by your assumptions as the musical progresses. As a cast member, hearing the hoots and jeers of the audience members while on stage when we hit the kick-line of the opening number “Willkommen” was definitely an adrenaline rush I will be pursuing until the end of my days. But those hollers were usually by audience members who, like myself in April during tryouts, knew nothing of what was coming. The ones familiar with the storyline were sanguine in their chairs, sipping their drinks, and ready for the true tale. I’d have to name all the cast members to do them each justice for the work they performed night after night, but since we are a Singletree magazine I’ll stick to the performance of John Tedstrom, whose article you read earlier this year, and Charis Patterson, local Edwards acting legend and performer in The Fabulous Femmes.   

 

John played the surprise Nazi sympathizer, Ernst Ludwig, in the VVTC production. He was absolutely remarkable, incredibly endearing, and completely traumatizing. His character’s progression from friendly nice guy on a train to Berlin and overall show villain slapped the audience across the face as gasps flickered throughout the room before the finale of the first act. Some audience members started laughing, they were so uncomfortable and terrified. I think one calls it “frightened out of their wits.” 

John’s character has a progression and timeline that mirrors the musical almost exactly, which gives the audience a meta-cinema experience that confuses senses and sense of time and place within the production. The cast felt very similarly throughout the performances, which we attributed to the location within the very sexy and scary Chasing Rabbits in The Solaris, but upon further reflection, was likely the strength of the main character performers like John. It was truly an honor to be in their presence.

 

Charis Patterson was our M.C, and she was delightfully charming, fantastically foreboding, and thunderously tragic. Originally cast as a male character, since the show’s inception and freestyle storytelling allowance as only this musical can offer, the character has become sexually ambiguous. Overall silly as the mime-clown of the show, Charis took us on a ride that dazzled and dazed, demented and demurred. The audience never knew what they were going to get when she stepped on stage to introduce a number, crack a joke, or remove her cloak. 

In the final scene, when the cast came out carrying our shoes to drop them on the stage in a pile, so redolent yet direct in its reference to those found outside of each crematorium when the allies stormed the concentration camps, Charis maintained composure as the pillar of the production.  She stood on stage in her German slick trench coat and hat, while the cast (okay, me, I cried every night like a baby) and the audience began to sob with collective horror. Upon the final characters’ entrance and position, with gravitas, she removed her costume to reveal that of a concentration camp uniform, bedraggled and weighed with the memory of human suffering and loss. All with her face a dripping mask of mime-like clown grotesque proportions.   

Needless to say, we had standing ovations every night of the 6-night production. We also had people leave at intermission because they came for legs and saw Nazi uniforms and death in the future. Not everyone wants to be reminded of their own humanity, their own complicit acceptance of modern-day social warfare. The director and production manager were approached by attendees of Cabaret from the London production earlier this summer, and the tearful couple told them that our version and our production and our cast was better than in London. Our valley is abundant with talent, and yes, we have day jobs, and yes, you should come see our next production or try out for the next round. Trust me, it’s worth it.

 

VVTC is performing at Route 6 Café October 31, November 1 and 2, their much more light-hearted fall show “Villains Anonymous!” Come for a brew and hear a stunning review of musical performances from the most famous villains of stage and screen! To learn more, please visit https://www.vailtheatre.org