Come hear the music play

Tonight I saw a cabaret of lost songs of Broadway, 1940-1950 at the Signature. I was familiar with two of the singers--Will Gartshore and Eleasha Gamble, both of whom I've seen in numerous things at Signature (and elsewhere). There were two other singers (Kimberly Sherbach and Jobari Parker-Namdar) that I didn't recognize, but they were all absolutely fantastic. As the theme of the cabaret suggests, the songs weren't the typical fare, so I only knew one. And I actually quite enjoyed all of them, but the bonus of the songs being from that era is that even had I not liked one, well, none of the songs were particularly long. So if I didn't like it, it would've been over soon enough!

They seemed to pick fairly amusing songs (though not all of them were). And I loved the descriptions of the plots of some of these shows. Like the one that was about a washroom attendant at a nightclub who was in love with the lead singer and tried to knock out her boyfriend with some roofies, only he wound up drinking the spiked drink himself, and had a daydream where the singer was the wife (mistress?) of King Louis XIV. Of course! And seriously, there were a half dozen crazy plots like this. A couple of guys during WWII inherit money, go to Texas, open a house for wives of men overseas, only people think it's a brothel! And so on.

And apparently, they made a bunch of these into movies. One in 1970, starring Florence Henderson! I totally want to look them up and Netflix them.

They also had songs from A Touch of Venus, with lyrics by Kurt Weill. I've known about Weill for years, but hearing the lyrics he wrote? Dude was hilarious. Which consequently makes me like Bertolt Brecht even more, as the two worked together.

I'm bummed I missed the first one they did (songs from 1930-1940, as well as a few other cabarets), but will totally have to check out more of these. Though it's a bit more awkward seeing these alone than it is to see a typical play, as the theater is set up as a cabaret--so everyone is sitting around small tables (and many people with wine and such; clearly these people have too much money). I did wind up having a nice chat with an older man who wound up at my table with me, though, so it all worked out in the end.