Musicals

With all the many different themes and subjects floating around local stages these past few years, it’s surprising that the paranormal hasn’t received much attention.

The Milwaukee Rep rectifies this with a production of Jahnna Beecham and Malcom Hillgartner’s cabaret musical They Came From Way Out There. Authors of last year’s acclaimed cabaret show Chaps!, Beecham and Hillgartner have put together another enjoyable evening of song and dance for the Rep’s Stackner Cabaret.

With all the many different themes and subjects floating around local stages these past few years, it’s surprising that the paranormal hasn’t received much attention.

The Milwaukee Rep rectifies this with a production of Jahnna Beecham and Malcom Hillgartner’s cabaret musical They Came From Way Out There. Authors of last year’s acclaimed cabaret show Chaps!, Beecham and Hillgartner have put together another enjoyable evening of song and dance for the Rep’s Stackner Cabaret. 

The show is set at a meeting of a fictitious paranormal society. The performers each play a candidate for the Society’s next president. Every major different aspect of the paranormal is represented in the cast. Michael Herold plays the Society’s founder – a man who had a close encounter in the Nevada desert half a decade ago. Jill Marie Anderson plays his wife, who he met during an out of body experience. (Their meeting is illustrated in a clever country-western-inspired musical number entitled “You Stepped Out Of Your Body and Into My Life.” ) 

Anderson’s character is a prim, Christian New-Age type cleverly offset by the pseudo-neo-pagan New Ager played by Katherine Strohmaier. In a clever turn for the character’s archetype, she sings a sweet love song to a Bigfoot that manages a brilliant end rhyme with the word “Yetti.”

 Lenny Banovez plays the stereotypical young, paranoid conspiracy nut. Banovez cuts a pleasantly erratic figure onstage, performing the same song in both rock and hip-hop styles before performing a tender duet with Strohmaier near the end of the show.

 Chip DuFord rounds out the cast as a scientist who had worked for NASA, privy to strange government secrets about the paranormal. In one of the production’s best moments, DuFord discovers evidence of mysterious home furnishings appearing in the skies all over the country. He is confronted by a hyper-intelligent recliner who offers to answer any question he asks. Michael Herold plays the recliner in what has to be the single most brilliant costume to appear on a local stage in a very long time. It’s amazing. 

The show’s pacing is wild and irreverent, including some surprisingly offbeat experimental stuff for The Rep. There’s an entire skit involving a rampaging bunny shadow puppet that may not be particularly funny (or really have much entertainment value, to be perfectly honest) but it shows a staggeringly edgy spirit for a mainstream show. 

Much of the rest of the fringe elements inherent in They Came From Way Out There are relegated to minor asides and obscure references that don’t detract from the overall experience. For all of its strange asides, this really is a mainstream show that will appeal to a relatively wide audience. Its weaker moments keep it from being completely enjoyable, firmly grounding it in the commercial end of the spectrum.

The many different skits and songs provide an opportunity for the actors to perform a wide range of different characters. DuFord’s straight-laced scientist is accompanied by multiple performances as burnt-out drunks. Strohmaier is sweet as a diminutive new age girl, but we also get to see her dressed up as a deftly dancing Man In Black in a fun little tribute to the Will Smith music video. 

This brings up an interesting point – this is a show firmly aimed at a much, much younger demographic than normally attends the Rep Cabaret. They may be aiming at a cabaret audience that simply doesn’t exist.

It looks harmless enough, a small dinner theatre building in Ashland with people who look just as normal as you do.

But don't be fooled. Oregon Cabaret Theatre is not what it seems. In fact, nothing in its new production, They Came From Way Out There is what it seems.

It looks harmless enough, a small dinner theatre building in Ashland with people who look just as normal as you do. 

But don't be fooled. Oregon Cabaret Theatre is not what it seems. In fact, nothing in its new production, They Came From Way Out There is what it seems. 

The five oddball characters on stage share a common bond that unites them in their collective and individual weirdness. First, they are all members of the Paranormal Society, but then, so are all of us in the audience, as society President Frank Morgan (Chip Duford) is quick to point out. Frank will be stepping down as president and we are to elect his successor from among the four candidates. Part of the president's responsibilities will be to protect The Sacred Thing (Aaaahhhh!). 

But getting back to what these folks have in common. They're all kind of nerdy in that geeky, gawky, way-too-much-time-spent-alone-with-their-own-thoughts kind of way. Their particular brand of oddness involves having been through a personal, life-changing experience with UFOs and other strange occurrences. Initiation by oddness. Trial by the peculiar. 

As part of the election process, we get to see each of the candidates re-enact those moments. And sing about them. And dance, too. This is a musical, after all.  — So, what do these folks sing about? 

Well, if you met your future spouse on the other side after you had both been struck by cars, as Frank and his fianc?e, Virginia Trotter (Suzanne Sieber), did, you would sing the country music-flavored, You stepped out of your body and into my heart. 

If your brain kept pulling in remote signals from outer space, like Ronald Zephyr's (Jonathan D. Visser), you would turn to heavy metal or hip hop to sing, I'm a human antenna. 

If you finally found someone to love, as did Gaia Goldenseal (Katherine Strohmaier), wouldn't you want to sing about it? 

Of course you would. And since Gaia's guy is the Abominable Snowman, her love song is Mr. Big. 

And if a piece of French Provincial furniture just happened to visit you and offer you the opportunity to ask those thorny questions that have always puzzled humankind, you probably would have done what Dr. Fleets (Will Churchill) did and sing about The Answers to life. 

The show is a tribute to the comic genius of its co-creators, Jahnna Beecham and Michael J. Hume who wrote the book, and Malcolm Hillgartner who wrote the music. The lyrics came from all three. And they are way out there. While the music and most of the bits are comic send-ups, there is an underlying smartness about them that raises the show way above the level of schtick. 

The props are few and the sets and costumes by Kerri Robbins are simple yet skillfully achieve the desired effects. Lighting designer Phil Shaw and sound designer Frank Sullivan keep the scenes moving with imaginative touches. Flashlights play an important role here. 

The cast is uniformly wonderful. They sing and dance with delight and capture their characters' quirkiness without going over the top. We end up caring about these people. Their concerns ' however strange ' become ours. 

I particularly enjoyed the seriousness of Seiber's Virginia Trotter combined with Duford's facial expressions, patterned socks and black shoes as the two try endlessly to keep things running smoothly at the meeting. 

The vocal ranges and expressiveness of Strohmaier and Visser place Hillgartner's always humorous and often inspired pieces in a perfect musical setting. There's even a mangled medley of Gilbert and Sullivan tunes right in the middle of the show. Seiber and OCT Artistic Director Jim Giancarlo provided the clever choreography. Darcy Danielson and Jim Malachi comprise the band which plays offstage, complete with eerie sounds. 

Churchill's earnestness cracked me