Cabaret!

Cabaret time!

Not the musical, mind you. People keep getting confused when we talk about cabarets. 

Let's clarify. 

There's Cabaret, which according to Wikipedia "is a musical with a book by Joe Masteroff, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and music by John Kander. The 1966 Broadway production became a hit and spawned a 1972 film as well as numerous subsequent productions."

Then there's the type of cabaret we went to on Monday night: "a form of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue—a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables (often dining or drinking) watching the performance."

If I understand correctly, there are cabarets in Cabaret. Hence the name.

The cast of Spring Awakening has been doing cabarets for their charity (Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids) in the past year and a half they've been on tour. Ryan and I have depended on the people who've gone to past cabarets to video tape and youtube the experience. Our favorites can be seen here, here, and here. 

And finally we got to actually go to a Cabaret ourselves.

On Monday night, the cast performed a cabaret called Girls will be Boys will be Girls will be Boys at a popular venue in Hollywood for Upright Cabarets. Ryan got us dinner tickets and we were set to go.

Even leaving at 3:30pm didn't get us there in time for our 7pm reservation, dang L.A. traffic. But we made it early enough to get center seats at the third from closest table, so not too shabby. We ordered drinks, dinner, and set in to wait for the show.

Since the show was all about boys singing girls' songs and vice versa, our first taste was Chase Davidson, singing Wendla's role in Mama Who Bore Me... complete with confused facial expressions and gestures. It was made of awesome.

More of the boys- this time singing My Junk.

The girls followed it up with the traditional boys' pieces in Touch Me.

Then it was time for the individual pieces. Steffi D did a very... unique medley of patriotic sounding songs. That's all I'll say.

Christy Altomare sang a song she wrote for a friend to sing to his girlfriend. Apparently she's always wanted to be able to sing it herself, so 'girls sing boy songs' night worked out perfectly for her to sing "Alessa." Loved it. Christy Altomare is going to be a household name someday. And we'll be able to say we knew her as little ol' Wendla Bergman. :)

Krystina Alabado sang a fierce version of "Lost in the Wilderness" from Children of Eden.

Kimiko (she's so cute!) Glenn sang a song called "You and I," which I'd never heard before.

There were much more, of course, but the blogger uploader's being slow, so I'm skipping right ahead to the end of the night. Here's Shingledecker singing one of the encore songs.

The girls hugging after a little Mama Who Bore Me (Reprise).

And the finale song, led by newbie swing Kayla Foster, "Let the Sunshine in."

After we left the cabaret, Ryan and I decided to re-enact our TGO friend date of six months ago; so off we went in search of a Little Caesar's. We found two. Neither were open. Don't they know we were trying to have a moment! Eventually we had to settle on a Wendy's for drinks and fries. It was meh.