Come to the Cabaret

[Disclaimer: some of the performers I'm going to refer to in this note are people I've performed and/or done cabaret conferences with. I'm egocentric enough to think that I can still be relatively objective about their work on stage but your mileage, as they say, may vary.]

The good news about Three-Legged Productions' latest show, It was a Very Good Year is that it was a very good show. The four performers - Anna Blair, Mark Kraft, Katie McGrath and John Flack (pictured) - all had opportunities to demonstrate their comic and dramatic chops. The music selection was nicely balanced between the familiar and the obscure. And the second act was one of the strongest I've seen on a local stage.

The bad news? The night that I attended (Thursday, May 21) they were doing all this good work for a house that was only about half full and consisted largely of other cabaret performers.

This is somewhat surprising. The cabaret scene has grown exponentially in the eight years I've been covering it for KDHX-FM and Cabaret Scenes. We've gone from a single producing entity importing national talent to multiple producers presenting an impressive array of local artists (like Blair and company) in addition to the out-of-towners.

So with all this activity, why aren't more people noticing?

Part of the problem, I think, is that public awareness of the wealth of local cabaret talent hasn't kept pace with the growth of that talent. Mass media coverage of the local cabaret scene is still scanty. Eight years ago I was the only critic covering the scene on a regular basks. That fact that I'm still the only one hardly seems reasonable.

Another part is St. Louis' long-standing artistic inferiority complex. Local audiences seem to assume that if you're practicing your art here in St. Louis, it must be because you're not good enough to do it somewhere else. An actor friend one remarked that the only way to make a living in the performing arts here was to leave town and then come back as an out-of-towner.

As a result, audiences who will turn out in droves for a mediocre show by someone with a national reputation won't walk across the street (literally) to see a far stronger production by local talent.

I'm not sure if there's any cure for the “we're not good enough” syndrome, but I do think that more coverage from the local media could only help. Cabaret is an immensely cool art form that's attracting younger performers and audiences. It's about time somebody started paying attention to that.

It would also help if Cabaret St. Louis - a well funded non-profit dedicated to promoting the art of cabaret in St. Louis - would step up to the plate. I love seeing Steve Ross, Tom Wopat and Liz Callaway as much as the next critic, but if we want to really make this a cabaret town, we need to encourage and nurture local talent. We need to build an audience for them because if we do that, we'll be building an audience for cabaret itself, not just for a select group of big-name stars.

So, to paraphrase a famous lyric, “come to the cabaret, old chum. And bring a couple dozen people with you.”