Cabaret Sunday: Songs of the 70’s
Cabaret Sunday: Songs of the 70’s
Breakthrough Theatre, Winter Park, FL</strong>
What do we really know about the 70’s? Sure, it was a thrilling era of hostages and endless crises, Punk Rock battering Prog Rock, and that pox and vexation of flammable male fashion: polyester. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and liable to fuse itself to your leg if you dropped a joint on it. But then there was disco: abhorrent to all sentient being, yet it is the one thing that survived and it now forms the basis of our Vaseline blurred reminisces of the Ford administration. But I digress…
Wade Hair and the Breakthrough theater have built a nice little cabaret scene here, and while it lacks the bar service of the competition it features a larger cast, better sight linen and a top ten trivia contest with no real prize beyond out-smugging your date. Tonight’s highlights include an unusual and touching “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” which until tonight I had never considered as cabaret material. There were the de rigueur disco numbers; “I Will Survive” and “Last Dance” sounded the best. Some Broadway is always nice, Mr. Hair channeled Barbara Streisand while Ken (No Last Name, Please) belted “Impossible dream.” Abba appeared, sans the trilling vocal dynamics of the originals, and Justin Scarlat popped off a gentle parody of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.” Was this decade ever as cool as it looks on TV today? Yes, but only if you think surviving on a desert island is nothing but costume changes and coconut phonographs. That’s the power of song: turning heartbreak and desperation into a pleasant low impact evening out on the town,
For more information, please visit http://www.breakthroughtheatre.com or look them up on Facebook.
