Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment that features music, song, dance, drama, recitation, squish, cicero, lipshitz. As vague as that sounds, after the two cabaret performances I had the pleasure of viewing last week, I was persuaded that the art of cabaret is an intimate and moving form of storytelling – and one that the ADC has not seen for a good number of years.

“Both shows had emotional highs and lows, humour, and deeply personal content”

Recent cabarets involved mainly speech and song, woven seamlessly together to create a narrative. Sam and Ava take on the World by Ava Fitzhugh and Sam Ericsson and Pretty Ugly by Theo Chen were CUMTS’ first foray into cabaret, preceded by Izzy Lane’s Liquor and Lust earlier this term. Songs were taken skillfully out of their show context and used instead to communicate something more personal. What was once ‘Mr Snow’ from Carousel became an ode to Ava’s woefully optimistic dating life, and ‘Another Hundred People’ from Company demonstrated Theo’s search for connection and romance, interjected beautifully with testimony of his own experiences that replaced the original Company monologues. Both shows had emotional highs and lows, humour, and deeply personal content, all underscored by two fourth-wall-breaking pianists (Bolin Dai and George Jackson respectively).

For me, Ava and Sam’s cabaret demonstrated the potential for the format to tell fictional narratives in a humorous and light-hearted manner. Ava and Sam chose to embody characters loosely based on themselves, but in a theoretical not-so-distant future where they enter the adult world. Their choice to self-consciously act, rather than talk as themselves in the present, made their fourth wall breaks increasingly hilarious. However, the show was not all light and silly, as two choices of songs from Company, ‘Marry Me a Little,’ and ‘Being Alive,’ aptly communicated their characters’ reservations about the pressures and landmarks of adult life, which are are all too real for a fourth year such as myself. Encompassing the dichotomy between this sort of personal reflection and the artifice of performance and entertainment is what makes cabaret so unique. Ava and Sam’s show was feel-good and self-aware, fun yet heartfelt.

“Cabaret is a format that invites the full range of theatrical performance”

Theo’s cabaret Pretty Ugly explored the highs and lows of body image, dating, and moving cities and countries, and the emotional toll of all this. It was as if we were transported out of the Larkum studio and into an intimate conversation where Theo opened up about the truly personal details of his life, interjected by carefully selected, poignant choices of music from a range of sources. Theo’s cabaret experimented more with different potential mediums of theatre, and the audience stood up and slow-danced to Mitski, joined in with a sing-along, and in a deeply personal manner were introduced to old projected photographs of Theo’s family. Theo’s charisma and comfort on stage was immediately apparent, as he sat and eloquently communicated to his audience as if we were all old friends. The evening left me reflecting on my own life, personal image, and ambitions, as the show emphasised the value in old and new connections and finding oneself in a changeable world. Cabaret in its inherent intimacy is a medium well suited for personal reflections; something that applied intergenerationally as the audiences were extremely mixed in age. Theo also shares my fascination with New York City, so it was apt that musical theatre accompanied his dialogue, as NYC appears so frequently in shows. 

Pretty Ugly displayed commendable emotional vulnerability and invited the audience to share in the highs and lows of Theo’s journey. Cabaret was the perfect form of expression for this, as we were treated to his smooth and powerful vocals, particularly in an outstanding performance of ‘Ladies Who Lunch’ from Company that balanced humour with passion and powerful cynicism, and was narratively significant for Theo’s search for self-image.

As a self-professed Cabaret enthusiast, the statement ‘life is a cabaret, old chum,’ has genuinely never rang so true. Cabaret is a format that invites the full range of theatrical performance, and of spectator experience, and I am eager to see where CUMTS takes it next.