Life is a cabaret

Moon over Dark Street; Living in the Bonus Round

by Anne Marie Donahue

Cabaret is busting out all over, not only in bars and restaurants but also in churches, schools, community centers, and theaters -- such as the Boston Center for the Arts, the Lyric Stage, and the fledgling Boston Theatre Works' space on Tremont Street. Booze-free cabaret is actually an oxymoron: "cabaret," derived from a Spanish term meaning "merry bowl," is French for "tavern." Misleading nomenclature, however, is the least of the challenges facing cold-sober cabaret. Barlessness raises the bar: when the audience isn't high, artistic standards must be.

With Moon over Dark Street (Friday through Sunday through November 22 at the BCA), Pilgrim Theatre aims for the moon and hits its mark. A celebration of the 100th birthday of Bertolt Brecht, the show is a kick-ass mix of songs that pair Brecht's dark lyrics with the twisted tunes of Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Pilgrim's performers, Belle Linda Halpern and Kermit Dunkelberg, put their own shine on the alienation meister's quirky material. In their solo turns, both perform with subtlety and panache. And together they're downright intoxicating. Like a top-shelf sipping whiskey, Moon over Dark Street starts off with a teasing bite and kicks in smooth and strong.

The show, however, goes down best if it's imbibed straight, undiluted by the copious and confusing information presented in the program and accompanying notes passed out to the audience. The latter includes a muddled justification of the show's title, which is "intended to convey an ambiguity in Brecht's writing." Did Brecht really see the moon as an unreachable pie in the sky and the "dark street" as "the real part, die finsteren Zeiten, the dark times. . . . "? Maybe so, but there isn't a lot of street and moon imagery in the songs in this show. What's more, the songs are grouped in the program under headings that seem to suggest a chronological organization that doesn't exist.

Part three, for example, is labeled "U.S.A. -- Exile," but most of the featured songs were written more than a decade before Brecht's stint in Hollywood, which came at the very end, not at the beginning, of his 15-year exile from Germany. And the section labeled "Germany -- The War Years" (years when Brecht was not in Germany) is introduced by one of several spoken excerpts from the testimony that Brecht delivered before the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947. Not only do these excerpts compound the confusion created by the headings, they also give the false impression that Brecht considered McCarthyism and Fascism to be morally parallel and equally evil. He detested both, of course, but he certainly marked the distinction between the blacklisting of thousands and the murder of millions.

If one ignores the maddening program and misplaced testimony, the show is straightforward and immensely entertaining. The better-known Weill material, such as "Mack the Knife" and "Alabama Song," brackets the less familiar Eisler stuff, all of it performed to Ron Roy's simple piano accompaniment. From start to finish, Halpern and Dunkelberg render the music of both composers with confidence and finesse. What makes the show a knockout, however, is the way they act the songs. Particularly when taken out of context, Brecht's lyrics -- which mix ideas and raw emotion in odd and complex ways -- can come off as brittle or, worse, bathetic. Under Kim Mancuso's deft direction, Halpern and Dunkelberg strike a balance between passion and restraint, heart and head.

By his own admission, composer/lyricist Steve Schalchlin writes straight from the heart. Although the solo cabaret show he performed last weekend at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education was billed as Living in the Bonus Round, all the songs were lifted directly, and in sequence, from The Last Session, the musical he wrote in collaboration with Jim Brochu. Seated at a baby grand piano, Schalchlin sings and talks the audience through the play, which is about a singer/songwriter with full-blown AIDS who intends to kill himself after making one last recording with his pals. In outline, at least, the plot sounds contrived, turning as it does on the intervention of a right-wing Christian homophobe who, by implausible coincidence, shows up at the studio and persuades the gay protagonist to abandon his suicide plan.

Although Schalchlin's songs are the core of the musical, they weren't written for it. Himself a singer/songwriter with AIDS, he wrote the tunes as therapy at a time when he was fighting a losing battle for his life. Thanks to breakthrough treatments that brought him back from the brink three times (leading the thousands of fans who frequent his Web site to call him Lazarus), he now has energy to spill his guts with brio. A blend of gospel, rock, and blues, Schalchlin's songs sometimes slide into schmaltz. By and large, however, his music is surprisingly upbeat, honest, and deeply affecting. Let's hope he keeps on keeping on.