Home Area Artists » Art Fairs & Festivals » Breaking News » Community Theater & Film » Local Art Stops » Public Art » Uncategorized subscribe: Posts | Comments search the site Dr. Kyra Belan share this Breaking SWFL Art News November 1-7, 2014 Cabaret 0 comments Posted | 0 comments Twelve performances of Cabaret come to the Lab Theater on February 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 21, 26, 27 and 28 at 8 p.m., and on February 14 at 2 p.m. There will also be an opening night reception, starting at 7:15 p.m. Tickets are $12 for students and $22 for adults at the door. The theater also offers Thursday night discounts to seniors and military, at $18.50 per ticket. Tickets are available from the theater’s website, www.LaboratoryTheaterFlorida.com or by calling 239.218.0481. In this section, you will find articles about the play, playwright, director and upcoming production of the show at the Laboratory Theater of Florida (posted in date order from oldest to latest). * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Ty Landers turns in Depp-like performance as Kit Kat Klub Master of Ceremonies in Lab Theater’s ‘Cabaret’ (02-07-15) On stage now through February 28 at the Laboratory Theater of Florida is Cabaret, the company’s first-ever musical. Produced and directed by Brenda Kensler, the 1998 Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall revival of the 1966 Broadway production stars Ty Landers as the oversexed, androgynous emcee of the Kit Kat Klub, a role that was reprised by both Joel Gray and Alan Cummings. Gray was the ringmaster in a circus of sexual deviants. Cummings, by contrast, brings the audience inside, seduces them into the Kit Kat Klub’s world of debauchery making them co-conspirators, co-criminals, complicit in the horror. As he aged, Cummings changed from a rent boy to an older, darker character, all the more cynical because of all that he had seen and done. Landers’ emcee clearly relishes the club’s decadence, depravity and amorality, but rather than beckoning us to join in the action, he seems to be asking through medley of quizzical, incredulous and farcical facial expressions “Are you really sure you want to do this?” Maybe it’s because he knows how it all turns out, or perhaps he realizes that once you start down the rabbit hole, there’s no turning back. But there is something foreboding, forbidding and stand-offish in this emcee’s interactions with the audience. “I did watch several interpretations of the role, although not the movie, since that’s not what we’re doing in this production,” Landers confesses. “[Director] Brenda [Kensler] and I are trying to do something fresh and new, realizing, of course, that the audience has certain expectations and there’s a fine line between these competing tensions.” Landers maintains this balancing act with the deft and adroitness of a Nik Wallenda crossing the dark, windy- city skies over Chicago on a tightrope without safety net or tether. At times, he gives himself over to wanton lechery and lasciviousness, getting deep into the mind and demeanor of his character with a look and intensity that conjures a made-up and costumed Johnny Depp. But at other times, he hangs on the periphery, observant yet strangely detached from the depravity losing command of the club and events spiraling out of control all around him. The musical number Two Ladies is a point in case. The lyrics suggest that our oversexed emcee is the center of an whirling, swirling threesome in which he’s the only man. “I like it. They like it. This two for one.” But on stage, the girls seem more interested in each other, leaving the emcee on the outside looking in during most of the routine. And that underscores Landers’ qua director Kensler’s slant on this Kit Kat emcee. He’s a metaphorical stand- in for the German people in the Weimar Republic in 1929-1931, as the Nazis swept to power seemingly overnight, vaulting Adolf Hitler into the office of Chancellor that was the stepping off point for his subsequent power grab in Germany and that Europe beyond. At first, like the vast majority of hedonistic, pleasure-seeking Germans, our emcee deludes himself into thinking that all this politics doesn’t affect him. But as it becomes clear that it does, he realizes too late that the democratic republic’s disintegration and the Nazi’s rise to power spells the end to their freedom and for the orchestra, the Kit Kat boys and him personally, the loss of their very lives. Blunting the pain with increasingly more booze, pills, drugs and debauchery, Landers’ metaphorical Master of Ceremonies is barely able to make it through the songs and routines he once handled with command, control and confidence. Landers drives this point home first with his rendition of If You Could See Her, which he performs with a gorilla to parody the Nazi propaganda about Jews, and by virtually disintegrating himself on stage as the play draws to its inevitable soul-shattering denouement which will stick in your heart and mind for days after the performance ends. But as American novelist Cliff Bradshaw warns Kit Kat headliner Sally Bowles midway through Act One, “If you’re not against all this, then you’re for it!” And, after all, there are consequences to elections. Whether you love the symbolic content of plays like Cabaret, or just really good singing, dancing and acting, there’s much to really, really like about Landers, co-star Taylor Adair (Sally Bowles) and the rest of the cast of Lab Theater’s revival of this three-time Broadway blockbuster. See above for play dates, times and ticket information. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Taylor Adair sparkles with evocative, sensitive portrayal of British cabaret singer Sally Bowles (02-07- 15) Cabaret opened last night at the Lab Theater. A musical? At Lab Theater? Hell yes! And while there are talented scene stealers, crazy good co-stars and the sullen, perversely sexy Kit Kat Girls, the star of this show is the inimitable Sally Bowles. But we don’t really meet the headliner until nearly 20 minutes into the show when the Kit Kat Klub’s slithery nameless emcee steps forward to say in his lilting heavily-accented affectation, “And now, meine Damen und Herren… Mesdames et Messieurs… Ladies and Gentlemen- The Kit Kat Klub is proud to present a most talented young lady from England. Yes- England! I give you- and don’t forget to give her back when you’re finished with her- the toast of Mayfair… Fraulein Sally Bowles!!” Bowles is passionately but sensitively played by Taylor Adair. This is Adair’s first lead, and hearing that, you might wonder what would prompt director Brenda Kensler to cast a relative rookie in such a big, important, complex role. And when Adair belts out the first stanzas of Don’t Tell Mama ( who “doesn’t even have an inkling that I’m working in a nightclub in a pair of lacy pants”), the Simon Cowells in the audience may be questioning Kensler’s choice of leading lady. Adair is more pitchy than melodic. She shouts more than sings, “And you can tell my Grandma, Suits me fine, Just yesterday she joined the line.” But all doubts about Adair’s vocal qualifications to play Sally Bowles become Memorex with Maybe This Time. The girl has pipes. Range, vibrato, tonality and vocal control to spare. But it’s her phrasing and musicality that impress. When playing off-stage Sally, Adair captivates with her limitless ability to lay bare her character’s cloistered emotions and deepest inner fears. What explains the difference between the show-stopping Maybe This Time and pitchy, less resplendent tunes like Don’t Tell Mama and Mein Herr? “I’ m trying hard to play Sally the way that Christopher Isherwood wrote the character,” Adair explains. Isherwood wrote the book (Berlin Stories) on which the play is based. Like the character Cliff Bradshaw, Isherwood went to Berlin to write a novel and ended up living with a promiscuous cabaret singer by the name of Jean Ross, on whom the character of Sally Bowles is based. “To prepare for this part, I read the novel and in it, Sally wasn’t super talented, which explains why she’s performing in a place like the Kit Kat Klub [which was a dive, although one of the better underground cabarets in Berlin at the time].” But that requires Adair to downplay her vocals when Sally’s on stage in the Kit Kat Klub, a task that’s complicated by being required to sing with a British accent. “I just get in character and give it over to acting,” says the self-deprecating Adair. “If you know how to hit a pitch, then you can not hit the pitch just as well.” Adair plays Bowles with sensitivity and understanding. “She wasn’t truly glamorous. She was stuck in the [1920s] flapper era. But Sally isn’t stupid,” Adair continues, supplying insight that is informed as well by hours spent viewing and breaking down I Am a Camera, a play that John Van Druten wrote based on Isherwood’s Berlin Stories that was performed on Broadway in 1951 and subsequently made into a film. “Sally has created this persona, this façade,” Adair observes. In fact, Bowles tells her love interest, Cliff Bradshaw, “I used to pretend I was someone quite mysterious and fascinating. Then I grew up and realized I am mysterious and fascinating.” But Adair knows better. “She’s not stupid. She is failing and, deep down, she’s knows it.