Danceworks Performance Company Delights with 'Torch and Glamour'

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Photo Credit: Paul Ruffolo

A fine torch song like Sara Bareilles’ “You Can Have Manhattan”—rendered so intimately by Ryan Cappleman near the end of Danceworks Performance Company’s Torch and Glamour that he seemed to be composing it—casts a glamor. A hush falls on the audience; we’re spiritually bonded, each in private reverie. The ability to cast such spells is easily glamorized and, therefore, a fit subject for comedy.

This is a funny show that delights in silliness and camp humor without losing sight of its subject. Capplemann’s co-star is Andrea Moser. Both are outstanding. Moser plays Love, the show’s emcee. Her performance is firmly grounded in intelligent compassion. Cappelman, as Sex, is no-less kind. The evening is arranged as numbers in a splashy, flashy, no-class lounge act. Brazen performances from the cast keep it defiantly vulnerable.

After a tiny prologue on the fun of dress-up and make-up, the overture from Judy Garland’s great late-career Carnegie Hall performance introduces Zach Schorsch’s “Making a Comeback.” The dressed up, made-up cast roll around the stage floor to the music of “Over the Rainbow”—bittersweet and no mean feat—then imagine themselves as Garland, lip syncing her version of “When You’re Smiling.” It’s perfect material for comic performances by the likes of Melissa Anderson and Kim Johnson. Anderson continues with a comic ballet she made with Schorsch and Dani Kuepper to a song from Disney’s Aladdin. Schorsch (a human magic carpet) partners her in lifts, but their low-ceilinged apartment makes ballet precarious.

Dancers improvise a meeting-and-marriage-proposal story, easily solicited from the audience. Kuepper, in great voice, belts “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” while dodging a barrage of beach balls. From audience suggestions, West Side Story is enacted with the (name a sea creature) versus the (name a mode of transportation) as its rival gangs. On crutches and with one foot in a cast, Christal Wagner sang well and tapped cautiously to “Hopelessly Devoted,” her real-life injury making it all the more pathetic. An audience member’s “awkward date story” is transformed to dance by the company in tutus to the thunderous climax of Swan Lake. Kuepper follows with a personal story I won’t spoil. Andy Zenoni raps impeccably as Cupid with a back-up group that includes Liz Licht and Maggie Seer. Cappelman as Dracula casts his glamor, turning all the dancers into practicing vampires, while Elizabeth Roskopf plays a lovely “Moonlight Sonata.”

Through Feb. 16 at Danceworks Studio Theatre, 1661 N. Water St. For tickets call 414-277-8480 or visit www.danceworksmke.org.