Page 12 HIGH GEAR November 1980

ENTERTAINMENT

Socko musical at Cabaret

By R. Woodward

I'll Die If I Can't Live Forever. playing through November 9. is the first show produced by Mark A. Marple at the Cabaret Dinner Theatre. It shows that he can get top talents to give him all they've got

Director Gary Darrow and the cast of six energetic, well trained singers get an exciting, big-time entertainment out of a book and musical score that seem competent in a small time sort of way when you just look at the texts

Predating Chorus Line by a few years. the show hangs songs on a loose framework of six hopefuls trying out for a revue at the Improvisation, an atmospheric but far from glamorous night spot in Manhattan, well known by the local talent as a place from which several celebrated show business personalities have headed for the big time.

The first half of the show consists of songs about living in Manhattan snow business marriage, trying out, and waiting for the show to open. The second half is a revue within the revue showing what our hopefuls have been cast in.

Rather than delving very deeply. the songs by Joyce Stoner tend to merely note the sights in a wide eyed manner while gliding over the surface of

things b. tivere is no meanness, pettiness, or pretension to them In delivering them, the cast. which manages to combine gusto with grace, rescues them whenever they veer dangerously close to glibness.

A song delivered by the whole cast entitled, "Where Would We Be Without Perverts?" comes off as a sprightly, wholesome jest.

Refreshingly absent from two songs about gays is any sense of coyness or compromise

Without sounding patronizing towards anybody. Gina Zelazny makes the audience chuckle. depicting the response of a would be sophisticate, singing "They Left Me For Each Other "

A song called "Great to Be Gay is given a cheerful socko production number which keeps anybody from taking offense at such lines as "We've no regrets for what we've done/Whoever thought a men's room could be such fun?"

Gina Zelazny's piquant manner keeps the jest around which "I'm in Love" is built from

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with great finesse a song about easy pick-ups called "My Place or Yours?" (Are we supposed to notice that much of the tune is

lifted from "Three Little Words"?)

Christopher Webb is an exuberant performer who can smile and smile without ever seeming to be overdoing it, and he manages to pluck all of the whiskers off of his role of the stage struck kid who has just arrived in the big city. His solo number "There's Always Someone Who Will Tell You 'No"" is just as emotionally persuasive after you've noticed its suspicious similarity to Roger's and Hammerstein's "You've Got To Re Carefully Taught."

Besides being excellent by itself, the singing of Don Thomas gives a great lift to the voices of those he sings with Thomas was knocked out of the show by and a second look at the show illness the first week of its run, after his return, revealed the whole production lifted to a different level of quality.

Besides serving as a key element in the show's choral effects.

seeming too juvenile and too he joins with Donna Christie to

slight to sustain an entire number

Jill Cumer-Paolini and Steve Snyder get a beautifully melodious duet out of "Strangers Who Sleep Side by Side," giving it emotional depth it might otherwise have lacked. They deliver

ill Cumer-Paolini and Steve Snyder sing "My Place or Yours," in the usical review I'LL DIE IF I CAN'T LIVE FOREVER playing through ovember 9 at the Cabaret Dinner Theatre. No Photograph, alas, was vailable of the whole cast singing "It's Great to Be Gay," another from the show "You can make réservations by calling (216)

37-3220. See review.

sing "Less is More and More." and the two of them together give a suave evocation of a top vaudeville number.

Christie's solo number "A .is For..." would probably strike most people as being easier to laugh at if the song were about VD instead of an abortion, but her cheerful evocation of a Country-western type singer will keep most people from pondering the grisly details that the author should have realized might occur to people.

Beside putting over her own solo material effectively, Christie is unusually adroit in adjusting her rhythm and demeanor in working with others

She and Christopher Webb get the most out of their "My Life's a Musical Comedy" number by seeming to share its rhythm and

outlook.

The show is very fast paced and flows along smoothly. Gina Zelazny, who choreographed the show, has made clever use of the limited space available.

The group's ensemble effects are so successful that only someone who attended all of the rehearsals could tell you who exactly contributes what. However top musicianship on the part of cach singer and on the art of pianist Andrew Howa are

undeniable.

Leading anti-fascist Kurt Muller, played by Kenneth Albers, looks askance at someone who wants some of the money earmarked for undergound activities in Europe In Lillian's WATCH ON THE RHINE playing through November 23 at the Cleveland Play House Drury Theatre. See review.

"Kennedy's Children". at University of Akron

By Bill Suhay

Kennedy's Children, a play by Robert Patrick, was presented Oct. 2-5 at the University of Akron's Sandefur Experimental Theatre in Guzzetta Hall.

The play was directed by William Compton as partial fulfilIment for a Masters of Arts degree in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance.

Kennedy's Children is a play about lost heroes.

It is about the young men and women who grew up believing that America is Camelot, a place where truth and justice prevail, and nothing seems impossible.

Then came the 1960's; political assassinations, an unjustifiable war, moral revolution.

How are these idealistic men and women affected and where are they now. This is the theme of Kennedy's Children. Its characters are survivors of the 60's. stripped of their rose-colored glasses, mired in the ambiguity of the 70's, where nothing seems possible and no one seems to

care.

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The setting Is Phepe's Place on the Bowery, a bar which really. exists and caters to the Bohemian tastes of the famous and notso-famous artists and political types that color New York.

It is Valentine's Day, 1974. Six Characters bare their souls to the audience in a series of unrelated

monologues.

Wanda, a middle-aged heroworshipper of President Kennedy, teaches retarded children in an attempt to put meaning back into her life.

Sparger is a gay Off-Off Broadway actor who uses alcohol to blur his often too keen perceptions of life.

Mark is a Viet Nam veteran hooked on the drugs and paranoia that got him through the

war.

Rona is a former 'hippie' activist in search of a cause..

Carfa had a dream to become the next Marilyn Monroe. That dream became a nightmare.

Jason is a bisexual bartender, too young to remember the 60's, yet its most tragic victim.

Under Compton's bold and clever direction, the small theatre in Guzzetta Hall was set up as Phebe's Place, with the actors sitting at tables mixed with the audience.

This device encouraged the audience's attention which might otherwise have waned due to the play's lack of a plot.

Robert Patrick's monologues are rich and insightful, depicting well the anguished souls of the characters who clung desperately to values which failed to withstand the test of time.

In previous productions of the play, the character of Jason, the (Continued on Next Page),