From Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune
Cappuccino’s Cabaret food for thought and a twilight romance
Reading Mein Kampf cover-to-cover helped Karmen Rodomar prepare to direct Cabaret Cappuccino Musical Theatre’s current offering.
Set in 1929 near the end of the Weimar Republic in Germany and just before the rise of the Third Reich Cabaret follows the goings on at the Kit-Kat Club in Berlin a club where “anything goes.” The audience also gets to know the life and loves of one of the club’s performers Sally Bowles (Asia Walker) a showgirl originally from London. Underneath all the song and dance however there is the sinister beat of the Nazi party goose-stepping its way to power.
“Weimar Germany was an insane time” says Rodomar. “The everyday person was drinking doing drugs having illicit sex. The people who abstained from this lifestyle were considered odd and outcasts. They were some of the younger people who formed the foundation of the Nazi party later on.”
Cabaret was made into a film in 1972 starring Liza Minnelli but Rodomar emphasizes that the film version is very different from that of the stage. She says she’s careful to remain true to the period of the play adding that it’s a work “very relevant to our times.”
“I want to highlight the relevance of the show to today” she says. “No one noticed back then how quickly things can change politically if you’re not paying attention. Our forefathers worked so hard to give us a free democratic society yet people now take so little interest in politics and what’s going on.”
Rodomar stages Cabaret on a thrust stage where the audience surrounds the stage on three sides. “It highlights our interconnectedness” she says noting that the audience is either watching the action onstage or looking at other audience members and gauging their reactions.
THEATRE FOR THOUGHT
A teenager’s journey with anorexia is the subject of Fire Exit Theatre’s new play Craving . Written by Delphine Brooker Craving is based upon her own experience with the condition.
She started writing the piece several years ago when she left her job as a lawyer in New York and came to Calgary. Brooker enrolled in a storytelling class with Doug Curtis at Ghost River Theatre. “We had to talk about any kind of journey that was at least seven years behind us. I thought my experience with anorexia was something worth exploring for myself personally and a story others might be interested in” says Brooker.
Brooker says she didn’t decide to write about her experience with anorexia to provide some sort of self-therapy. The reason was far more practical. “It’s difficult to get cast in things so I started on my writing venture to provide myself with material” she says.
What started as a one-woman piece that Brooker performed at both the Vancouver and Edmonton fringe festivals is now a full-length show with a cast of five. “When Fire Exit became involved they asked me if I could rewrite it for a full cast. I had to change a lot of what was monologue into dialogue” Brooker says admitting there’s a bit of fear — and a feeling of freedom — in seeing others perform her personal story.
“When my family came out to see it for the first time it was tough” she says. “We had never talked about it. I went back to my dressing room and started bawling. I thought they were going to hate me but they were unbelievably supportive.
“It did end up being cathartic” she adds even though that wasn’t her purpose in writing it. “It helped in opening the issue up with my family. Romance is seeing somebody for what they really are and still wanting them warts and all.”
SEX ON THE STAGE
Romance is also explored in Coldwater Production’s romantic comedy Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune . Written by Terrence McNally it tells the story of two lonely middle-aged people and the relationship they find with each other.
Set in New York City the play opens in darkness with two people making love onstage. “It’s not poetic it’s realistic” describes director Kevin McKendrick. “The playwright intended these roles be played by real people with all their flaws. Something in that realism makes it more poignant.”
“Claire de Lune” refers to a piece by French composer Claude Debussy. “It’s considered by some to be the most beautiful piece of music ever written” says McKendrick. “It’s playing on the radio the extraordinary night when the two unlikely lovers come together. The song becomes a metaphor for the beauty of their relationship.”
Coldwater Productions is a professional theatre company headed by Cindy Vanden Enden an instructor at the Playhouse North School of Theatre in Calgary. McKendrick says Coldwater’s mandate is to focus on “gritty realist theatre.”
Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune “represents a place most people have been at some point in their lives” McKendrick says. “Will the future hold more than it offers at present? You can flee from love or open yourself up to the possibilities.”
