Cabaret XXX: Everybody F*cking Dies

I know what you’re thinking, brothers and sisters. “If everybody f*cking dies, why is he writing this f*cking review? They’re all dead!” I have a single-word answer for you, my friends: replacements.

Yes, it’s true. The XXXs – Allyson Harkey, Karen Lange and Toni Rae Salmi – were demolished in a plane crash, just like the heroic rockers Big Bopper, Buddy Holly, and Senator Ted Stevens (R. –Alaska). Now we are gathered in a memorial cabaret, under the mortuarial auspices of one Morgan (Anderson Wells), a rocker-cum-funeral director who is in the business, he admits, because there’s more money in death than in music.

In attendance: Kelly (Karen Lange), Karen’s cousin from Boston, who advertises her toxic relationship to her husband by bellowing instructions over the cell-phone; Bridget (Allyson Harkey, who is also musical director), Allyson’s lover, who is now Executive Assistant to a psycho and who must constantly advise her substitute how her boss likes her latte; and Lynda (Toni Rae Salmi), Toni’s best enemy from high school, whom Toni had thrown out of her last concert.

Fortunately, the XXXs excellent band (Felix Page, keyboards; Roddy Rasti, bass; Mark Schramm, guitar; and Christopher Herring, drums) is on board, so the assembled multitude can do what we all do at memorial services: sing the old songs. A little Dylan, a little James Taylor, some Doors, some Blue Oyster Cult, Clapton – even snippets of “A Day in the Life.”

But before we begin the services, we – the members of the audience – are asked to write down the one thing we want to do before we die. “Unfold the secrets of a fusion-based energy system,” I write. That ought to keep me on my feet for a while. Later, Kelly reads a selection of bucket-list wishes from a fishbowl. “Get ringworm,” says one. “Eat worms while in the shower,” says the offering of a like-minded colleague. I shrink away from everybody a little in my seat.

But once things get under way, Morgan invites those who the XXXs left behind to raise their voices in musical tribute to the deceased, and Karen, Bridget and Lynda comply, all in their turn. They are, of course, backed by the XXX-band, all electric grace and percussive boom. Frankly, the XXXs are to cabaret what Chernobyl is to the Yule Log, and when they are at their best, the result is kick-ass rock: powerful, exalting, and beautiful.

They are not always at their best. Regrettably, the Baldacchino Tent features a wall of sound – and not the kind Phil Spector had in mind. Noise from the next-door bar comes in assaultive waves. I know we must eat (try the beef brisket sandwich, if you haven’t already), drink, and talk, but to do so in such intimate quarters with a performance space – even one where people are producing loud rock – significantly diminishes the audience experience. I will not miss this aspect of the Fringe when it moves to its new location next year.

The consequence is that between the ambient noise and the band’s powerful instruments, we lose much of Lange’s and Salmi’s work. They both have good voices, but even when they sing together, they are only intermittently audible.

The remarkable thing is that Wells and, especially, Harkey seem immune to this sort of interference. Morgan is the kind of funeral director who likes to get down and boogie (you probably know one like that) and when Wells sings, he takes a song over and makes it shimmer and dance. He appears to have about a four-octave range and is at his best when he kicks the song into the higher registers, making it sound electrified, like the riffs from Schramm’s guitar.

And I cannot say enough about Harkey. Her voice is so pure and precise that it cuts through the noise around it and goes directly into your brain. Like Wells, she has astonishing range, and is best when she does the soprano parts. Her voice sometimes sounds like a teakettle ready to boil, and then soars off into some unexpected plane, swooping over the landscape like a classroom of kids let out of school for summer vacation.

The best is when they all – including the band – sing together. For brief snippets members of the band sing solo; Herring in particular displays an excellent voice in those moments.

The XXXs have engaged playwright Steven Spotswood to write the dialogue connecting the songs, and as a result Cabaret XXX: Everybody F*cking Dies is wittier and more coherent than these sorts of things usually are. Still, this is really “House Party” on steroids.

In the end, though the XXXs are no longer with us, their replacements agree to take on their mantle for a while. As the Who points out, “Rock is dead. Long live rock.”

Take me to the DCTS 2014 Capital Fringe Guide