|
The lighter side of ghoulish
[Publicity photo]
The Central Stage Theatre company’s production of Macabaret includes, from left, Annie Morrison, Ina Jo Donovan, Charlie Schwartz and Jeff Kin. |
By ROBERT HICKS, Times Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 17, 2002
Love and death lock arms in Macabaret, where the bizarre is softened with music and dance, and the final emphasis is on living.
|
 |
ST. PETERSBURG -- Campy, raunchy and satirical, Scott Keys and Robert Hartmann's Macabaret features 15 original songs in styles that include the country-western R.I.P., the ballad Moon in the Window, the model-industry rap spoof Skin and Bones and the satirical lament Broadway Elegy.
"It's a real pastiche musical revue, all in a very funny way using death as a metaphor for many things: the death of relationships, the death of dead-end careers and the death of Broadway," said Keys, whose show opens Friday at Central Stage Theatre.
Macabaret features Jeff Kin as the show's elegant, deadpan vampire narrator, Phil Graves. Charlie Schwartz plays his sidekick, comedian Paul Bearer. Ina Jo Donovan is the sexy vixen torch singer Helena Handbasket. The "Corpse de Cabaret" is headed by Annie Morrison as the grand diva Maude Lynn, whom costumer David Covach has decked out like the bride of Frankenstein.
All arrive at Central Stage Theatre from the show's Florida premiere, in October 1997 at Florida Studio Theatre in Sarasota; Macabaret had its world premiere in October 1994 in New York.
Keys, 41, a native of Dayton, Ohio, and a resident of Sarasota since 1996, and Hartmann, 39, a Tucson native living in New York, conceived of Macabaret as graduate students in musical theater writing at New York University.
"Scott and I have always had similar interests in Halloween things and in the creepy and bizarre," Hartmann said.
Part Rocky Horror Picture Show and part Addams Family, Macabaret's songs also include Dead End Job, which is staged like a vaudeville song, with Kin and Schwartz dancing around in top hats and canes while grave-digging and telling jokes.
Phil Graves is secretly in love with Maude Lynn, but she ignores him. He introduces her with macabre humor: "We're lucky to have her, that lovely cadaver. She put the b-- back in obituary."
Helena Handbasket sings about an ill-fated love affair in her torch song, Grave Mistakes.
There are a few nods to Dr. Jack Kevorkian and an odd take on AIDS in a song about a lovelorn vampire, Blood Type.
"They're all done in a tongue-in-cheek, dark humor sort of way," Keys said.
Ballads show the characters' sensitive sides. Moon in the Window deals with infidelity. A woman stalks a man in search of unrequited love in Ghost of a Chance. And a search for true love comes to life in the haunting Love Me In The Light.
"We have a tango and some vaudeville things, but with some of them, particularly the ballads, we wanted to get to a deeper, more honest place," Hartmann said.
Macabaret concludes on a positive note with Long For This World.
"It's almost a hymn to making the most out of life that you can and being able to laugh at the bad things that happen," Keys said.
* * *
PREVIEW: Macabaret, Friday through Nov. 3 at Central Stage Theatre, 2235 Central Ave., St. Petersburg. 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Special Halloween performances at 8 and 10:30 p.m. Oct. 31, costumes recommended. $18. (727) 327-7529.
Back to Weekend
© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111
|
