review: WIDE AWAKE: A CIVIL WAR CABARET
Medley is the name of the complicated, charming and entertaining gamethe Bearded Ladies are playing in their tuneful cabaret, according to Toby Zinman
by Toby Zinman
for the Inquirer
The Bearded Ladies are five women and two men. They sing—very well--and they wear bizarre costumes. Their new show, Wide Awake: A Civil War Cabaret is wildly entertaining, even if it still needs some kinks worked out.
Medley is the name of their complicated, charming and entertaining game: old and new, historical and contemporary, male and female, funny and moving, parody and pointed if implicit social commentary. This is the American Songbook in snippets, glimpses, segues, shifts and slides. Old songs from the Old South ("Swanee," "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny," and new songs about the South ("The Night they Drove Old Dixie Down," "Sweet Home Alabama") and songs from the North ("John Brown's Body," "Come Together"). The program lists 33 songs.
The star Bearded Lady is clean shaven; John Jarboe plays Dixie in a spectacular and enormous ante-bellum gown who proves, on stilts, that the South's gonna rise again. He has a delicious manner and a wonderful tremolo, and is, incarnate, the appeal of the gone-with-the-wind myth America has succumbed to (just listen to the accents of the Republic candidates as they court us in the Tara of their mind). He is also the fact of the fakeness of all that, being a guy in drag. Dixie/Jarboe reminds us that America has "traded freedom for magnolia blossoms and soft breathable fibers," good cotton being so hard to get these days, even in the land of.
The Bearded Ladies who are actually ladies are Liz Filios (who sings a gorgeous song with lyrics by Walt Whitman, warning Dixie that "your ass is leaves of grass"), Jessica Hurley, Rebecca Kanach, Mary Tuomanen, and the outstanding Kristen Bailey. They represent the North in huge Lincoln tophats, corsets, britches, moustaches and boots. Heath Allen is the stalwart piano player and the show's musical director, and EJ Simpson guests on drums.
The venue is not ideal (not so comfy, poor sightlines) and there are moments in what seems like a work in progress that don't work, like the dividing of the audience with a rope. But mostly The Bearded Ladies provide a merry hour of song and fun—as well as a glass of a concoction called Dixie's Downfall.
Bearded Ladies at the Wilma Theatre Lobby, Broad & Spruce Sts. Through Nov.19, and Dec.1-3 at 10:30 p.m. Tickets $20. Information: 215-546-7824.
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