By J. Scott Hill

The breezes have turned cold and the fall color is past its peak; snow will come before long. Every year at this time, I try to find the perfect holiday pageant or cabaret or spectacular: somewhere to take family and friends to fill them with festive feelings of the holiday season — pure entertainment, part of an evening of good fellowship and liberal consumption of holiday cheer.

The holiday I mean is, of course, Halloween.  For Halloween this year, Porchlight Music Theatre may be giving Chicago the perfect evening of frightening festivities.  It’s macabre! It’s cabaret! Just like the teleportation experiment gone terrifyingly wrong in The Fly, these two elements have been mashed-up together to create the killer chimera Macabaret!

The show opens upon a lifeless set upon a dim stage. A ghoul, like an acolyte to some denizen of the Underworld, makes a procession of one across the stage lit by his solitary candle. The set hints at the abandoned mansions of Universal horror movies of the 1930s and 40s with all of the furniture shrouded in white sheets. The creeping creep makes his way upstage to a grand piano where he ceremoniously places his candlestick, somberly sits, and begins to play — not “Toccata and Fugue” or any other chilling canticle; rather, we hear what sounds like the opening vamp of “Willkommen” from Cabaret.

L. Walter Stearns directs a wonderful ensemble of fine vocalists through songs, recitations, and sketches.  Every member of this cast displays monstrous talent.

Virginia Brazier plays the anemic Victoria Bledsoe.  At times she seems meek and ancillary, only to explode into the forefront, seemingly out of nowhere.  She has the entire audience in apoplectic fits of laughter during two of her numbers.

Steven Rader plays Paul Bearer, the most comical of the choir of cabaret cadavers.  As an actor, Rader is a fantastic active listener, without stealing focus. In doing so, he accentuates the strengths within others’ performances.  Rader is delightfully goofy twanging through a country music parody, and is absolutely chilling when performing a poem about werewolves.

Heather Townsend is tall and lank and perfectly punk as Maude Lynn, yet when she sings she brings a hot sultriness that is unexpected.  She is a particularly sympathetic rotter in her duet “I’m Going Green,” a song about the ultimate act of recycling.

Rachel Quinn looks like a dancer out of Chicago or Sweet Charity or Cabaret (replete with the Clara Bow hairdo), but she sings like one of those sinister Sirens who led so many sailors to their demise.  She gives a spirit-raising chair dance while belting out the post-mortem torch song “Ghost of a Chance.”

The Big Bad among these evil dead is the Emcee, Phil Graves, played by Cameron Brune.  Brune’s voice is the strongest and the most expressive among a group of singers/actors/performers who could have each carried any show by themselves.  He is especially strong as half of a Vaudeville double on the number “Dead-End Job.”  It is damned hard to be undead and funny.  It is a damned sight harder to be undead and unfunny while seeming to really try to be funny but failing on an epic scale — and being truly funny in that enterprise.  Confused?  Cameron Brune wasn’t.  He sold the try and sold the fail and, with an impressive co-conspirator in that Great Reactor Steven Rader, Brune was so damned funny that I kept swallowing air trying just to breathe through my laughter.

Rob Hartmann and Scott Keys have written a selection of mostly humorous, always clever spooky show tunes. The three or four more serious numbers truly are haunting.  This is songwriting at its tightest and most clever.

See Macabaret…IF YOU DARE!   Miss this infinitely enjoyable Halloween treat…AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!  This is a ridiculous and sublime way to celebrate this haunted holiday season.

4 STARS

(“Macabaret” runs through November 1, at Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont Ave. 773-327-5252)

Current Season | Porchlight Music Theatre, Chicago

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.