Cabaret, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, The Red Suitcase all Shine ON STAGE

CABARET:  Cabaret opened on Broadway in late 1966 and ran for 1,166 performances – at the time quite a megahit. The show featured music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff, based on a play by John Van Druten which in turn was based on a semi-autobiographical story by gay icon Christopher Isherwood. On its opening, Joel Grey had fifth billing.  A highly successful 1972 film version followed which replaced several of the Broadway songs with new ones such as “Mein Herr,” “Money Makes the World Go Round,” and “Maybe This Time.”  Those replacement songs have been used in most subsequent productions. In 1987, the show was revived briefly on Broadway with Grey receiving top billing. The show had several West End productions, the first starring Judi Dench as Sally Bowles!  In 1993, Director Sam Mendes directed a significantly re-invented London production featuring Alan Cummings as the Emcee. That production was staged on Broadway in 1998, still featuring Cummings as the highly sexualized host of the Kit Kat Club.  For the production being produced this month at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, director/choreographer Josh Rhodes has reconsidered the show’s elements, small and large, to create what has been described as “the most cohesive, well-rounded, fully conceptualized production of this musical … to date.” The Old Globe seems to do no wrong in their productions and they are well worth a drive to San Diego if you live elsewhere. Note, The Coachella Valley Repertory is also staging a new production of Cabaret next spring, and a Broadway revival is planned for 2024. (www.TheOldGlobe.org) 9/1 – 10/8.

OUR DEAR DEAD DRUG LORD: Los Angeles’s Center Theatre Group which operates the Ahmanson Theatre and the Mark Taper Forum (currently closed) also helms a wonderful, smaller playhouse in Culver City called the Kirk Douglas Theatre. They use it for some of their edgier works, including this month’s production of Our Dear Dead Drug Lord by Alexis Scheer.  Four teenage girls, self-styled apprentices in sorcery, gather in a treehouse and use a Ouija Board to contact deceased narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar. It has been described as “A rollercoaster ride through the dangers of girlhood, and audiences will be left catching their breath.” What starts out as popcorn-chomping fare ala Buffy the Vampire Slayer soon evolves into darker territory as we learn more about the bonds that unite these teenage girls. The ending is very explosive, stagey, and involves at least two additional actors, but everything I have read about the play specifically avoids details. They all say “You’ve got to see it to find out” – and I will!  (www.centertheatregroup.org)  Plays through 9/17.

THE RED SUITCASE:  The Best Play Winner in the “Del Shores Foundation Writers Search,” The Red Suitcase follows the life of a southerner named Pogue from his unusual birth to the death of his father. The play explores the sometimes-difficult relationship between fathers and sons and the many moments, stories, and characters that build a person and a life. Pogue is led on a journey to unpack his memories that takes him from, “we are the sins of our ancestors” to “we are the hope of our ancestors.” It is a play of family, survival, and finding ourselves in the stories that made us. The Del Shores Foundation has the goal of “Finding and facilitating success for the next generation of southern LGBTQ+ writers.” Shores is directing this production and it stars his long-time collaborator, Emmerson Collins.  (https://p3theatre.biz/theredsuitcase/)