Tag Archives: cabaret

Fringe Day Six: Eleanor and Vavianna. Not together.

Leave a reply

I didn’t catch Ingrid Garner’s solo storytelling show last year, Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany. But I heard such good things about it from people whose opinions I value that I was sorry to miss it.

This year, her sequel, Eleanor’s Story: Life After War, is on stage at one of the Holy Trinity Anglican Church venues. (This Fringe-grounds-adjacent church community embraces arts outreach year-round, and they have hosted Fringe venues for long enough to be very good at it. There’s a tea-room, a “cheer-garden” with liquor rules allowing you to finish your drinks while in line for a show, and always cheerful patient knowledgeable FOH volunteers.) This year’s show is also a solo storytelling performance by writer/performer Ingrid Garner (and, it turns out, the granddaughter of the real-life narrator). It was very well done. The 17-year-old, who had been stuck in Berlin with her family throughout World War Two, gets a visa to return to the USA in 1946 and describes the next year as the “blackest year of my life”. If you ever read Anne Frank’s diary, you may have been startled to read about her ordinary growing-up concerns being as significant to her as the mortal danger and deprivation she was suffering with her family. In this story, some of those horrors of living not just in wartime Germany but then in Russian-occupied Berlin were a bit easier to listen to because they were recounted by someone who survived. But the confusions and humiliations of a teenager landing in an American high school while experiencing culture shock and post-trauma reactions were so easy to empathize with. The solo performer easily conveys the 17yo’s attitudes and feelings, but also re-creates various family members, the best friend she leaves in Germany, teachers and classmates, as well as less benign encounters.

Late last night, while Late Night Cabaret had the night off, I attended Vavianna Vardot’s Famous Sex Party at the beautiful Rapid Fire Exchange venue, Rapid Fire Theatre’s year-round home. It is hosted by Amber Nash of Atlanta in the statuesque stage persona of Vavianna Vardot. Other parts of last night’s entertainment included a band, burlesque performers Sharpay Diem and Violette Coquette, Zackary Parsons-Lozinski singing crude lyrics to a familiar song, various audience participation bits including inviting a visual artist to do a painting of Vavianna during the show (the outdoor performer Fairy Cowboy/Keltie Kip Monaghan, who was great), and I don’t remember what all else.

Tonight I’ll be back at Late Night Cabaret, selling drinks rather than drinking them, but still watching the show. And before that, I’ll get to watch Keith Brown’s 100% Wizard! Maybe I’ll see you there!

Cabaret

1 Reply

Listening to the musical soundtrack from a show evokes vivid memories of the show, sometimes more than expected.  That is why, after my trip to various US destinations this spring, I was sitting on a full airplane back to Edmonton, but I feel like I’m sitting in a theatre, specifically the Kit Kat Club Studio 54, swept into the world of Cabaret, and the nightclub in 1930s Berlin while the prospect of Nazi power loomed like the Nightwatch on Babylon 5.   This was not the most comfortable mood to be in on an airplane, but it was a wonderful show and I wanted to remember it as fully as I could.

The musical Cabaret was the last show I saw on my trip to New York City.  it opened recently with Alan Cumming (currently in the TV drama The Good Wife) as the Emcee, Michelle Williams as Sally Bowles, and Bill Heck as the viewpoint character American novelist Cliff Bradshaw.  The poignant and tragic glimpses of ordinary people going about their lives ignoring or worrying about or unaware of the political and social shifts during what we know is the time immediately before World War II create a compelling story.  You can’t raise the narrative stakes much higher.  The plot line about Fraulein Schneider, the landlady, and about her late-in-life suitor Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit seller, was particularly heartbreaking.  The Emcee’s speeches and songs addressing the imaginary cabaret audience give an impression of self-conscious parody of depravity, but the other narrative between the songs, like Sally Bowles’ matter-of-fact acknowledgement that various members of the chorus had male and female lovers, just felt like a way of illustrating that the culture of that time and place wasn’t very different from our own.

The front rows of the orchestra and balcony sections in the theatre were all set up like little cabaret tables, with candle lights.  In the parts of the musical set during cabaret performances, the little table lights lit up, so that even though I was sitting in a cheaper seat I felt part of an intimate live performance.  The Club space at the Citadel feels similar, so I imagine I’ll recall Cabaret the next time I go to a show there.  The male ushers for the performance were not entirely clothed, adding to the impression of arriving somewhere exotic and slightly daring.   Before the show started, the orchestra musicians were wandering around and warming up on stage, before settling in to their platform above the main part of the stage.

Both Alan Cumming and Michelle Williams will be replaced by other performers for the extended run of this show.  While I loved seeing Alan Cumming in this role, the show would be good even without them.