We had so much fun last year at the Mad Cow Theatre's Orlando Cabaret Festival: It Was a Very Good Year that it wasn't hard to decide to return. As we had last year, we gilded the lily by eating dinner at the nearby Napasorn Thai restaurant, although this time we saved a whole lot of money by dining there without buying the parking/show/dinner package. We lost out on parking, though. There was some big bash going on downtown, which meant we paid a flat "event parking" fee of $5 instead of 50 cents/hour it should have been. Ah, well. Last time we parked in Boston it cost some $32, so I guess I shouldn't complain.
Whereas last year we chose the earliest possible date (1925), this year we picked the latest: 1949. This time I recognized 15 out of the 19 songs, some of which I hadn't heard in many years, so it was quite natsukashii.- Music Music Music (Weiss/Baum)
- A You're Adorable (Kaye, Wise & Lippman)
- Let's Take an Old Fashioned Walk (Berlin)
- Mona Lisa (Evans/Livingston)
- I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (Berlin)
- Here's that Rainy Day (Burke/Van Heusen)
- That Lucky Old Son (Cillespie/Smith)
- Lavender Blue (Traditional)
- I Can Dream Can't I? (Fain/Kahal)
- Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor (Berlin)
- Peter Cottontail (Burke & Haggart)
- Rudolph (Marks)
- Ghost Riders (Jones)
- Jackie Robinson (Johnson)
- I've Got a Loverly Bunch of Coconuts (Heatherton)
- It's So Nice to Have a Man Around the House (Elliott/Spina)
- C'est Si Bon (Seelan/Hornez & Bett)
- Diamonds Are a Girls' Best Friend (Robin/Styne)
- South Pacific Medley (Hammerstein/Rodgers)
The performance we attended was the first of four, and they had not quite got all the kinks out, but for the most part it didn't matter. The only time it really bothered me was in the South Pacific medley. I played in the pit orchestra for a production of South Pacific, and even though that was forty years ago (!) I heard the songs so many times I can still sing a good deal of most of them. So when the singers messed up their lines, I knew it. But forgotten lines don't have to detract from a performance. What was upsetting was that it was clear to us the performers, or not all of them anyway, didn't really know the show. They were singing the songs, but not in a believable way, if you know what I mean. Even the amateur community acting troupe I played for sang them better, though their voices were not nearly as good, because the actors were in character. They knew whereof they sang.
A most notable exception was Stephan Jones, whom I mention by name because I was so impressed. The way he sang Some Enchanted Evening stood head and shoulders above every other singer and every other song of the very good evening. It was stunning, it was incredibly moving. That's far from my favorite song from the South Pacific; it was the way Jones sang it that mattered. He was Emile.
Here's a puzzle. Why would they change the lyrics of There Is Nothing Like a Dame (which they sang very well by the way)? They replaced the verse below with other words that I can't remember. Is there something offensive about them that I'm missing?
We get packages from home,
We get movies, we get shows,
We get speeches from our skipper
And advice from Tokyo Rose,
We get letters doused with perfume
We get dizzy from the smell!
What don't we get?
You know darn well!
