Review: Excuse Me While I Change by Michelle Cheney
by Michael Meigs
Michelle Cheney has a lot of fans and friends in this town -- enough to fill up the 85-seat City Theatre in direct competition with the Superbowl. Mind you, the feminine persuasion was visibly in the majority, probably having abandoned their men friends to the Nachos, beer and television as they went off to enjoy Michelle's patter, song, wit and costume changes.
Michelle Cheney has often appeared on Austin stages, but she made an early confession: she is not/NOT a native Texan. She comes from Utah, and she emphasized her non-Texanity with her deliberately goofy choice of hat for the very funny, Austin-specific parody of Evita("Don't cry for me/I've gone to Texas. . .").
You may have seen her as Sister Mary Amnesia in City's Nunsense last summer. She pops on a wimple over her evening frock to reprise that character's Loretta Lynn moment in "I Could've Gone to Nashville."
She's not just a voice, as you know well if you saw portray dramatic roles in Talking With and The Shadow Box, both done last year by NxNW Theatre Company.
Cabaret entertainment requires wit and personality. She hangs those clever songs on a life story and a theme. In the program she quotes Katherine Mansfield ("Everything in life that we really accept undergoes a change") and she comments, "Change isn't just about rotating costume, clothing or looks. It's about learning and growing from the bumps in the road."
She gets a kick from portraying women frustrated in their relationships -- Miss Adelaide's lament in Guys and Dolls, for example, and My Husband Is PlayingAround from Golf, The Musical, as well as a patter song with talented keyboard accompanist Kevin Oliver, one that's a frantically high speed parody of sensitivity training for couples.
Last summer Cheney studied in Italy with singer-songwriter-cabaret star Amanda McBroom, an experience that prompted her to undertake this cabaret venture. Fittingly and as a tribute to McBroom, toward the end of the 80-minute show she gave us a beautiful, poignant rendition of McBroom's composition Errol Flynn. It's a tribute to McBroom's actor father David Bruce, who appeared in many films from the 1930's to the 1950's, including several with Errol Flynn -- where his name always appeared on the posters, three or four lines below Flynn's. McBroom's lyrics and Cheney's delivery of it plucked at our heartstrings, reminding us that the best cabaret art is storytelling.
EXTRA
Click for view program leaflet for Excuse Me While I Change by Michelle Cheney
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Excuse Me While I Change
by Michelle Cheney
Michelle Cheney
