Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

The Three Degrees Cabaret
24 May 2000 - The Globe and Mail:
"No life in this cabaret" (by Kate Taylor)

No Life in this cabaret

THEATRE

THE THREE DEGREES CABARET
Written and directed by Adam Nashman
Starring Sean Power and Nicola Pantin
At Toronto's Buddies in Bad Times
Rating: *

KATE TAYLOR
Theatre Critic, Toronto

In theory, it should be possible to create an entertaining show set in a nightclub that combines onstage acts with a backstage drama. You might call it Cabaret. In practice, it's going to take engaging live performances and a strong script, both of which are missing from a limp and derivative piece called ?php dispLink('threedegreescabaret', 'The Three Degrees Cabaret');?>, now playing at Buddies in Bad Times.

The show is written and directed by Adam Nashman, an artist whose work (The Song; The Far Side of The Moon with Robert Lepage) is often uneven but never as sloppy and stupid as this. His premise is that the cellphone-juggling MC Jimmy J. Tee (Sean Power) is trying to keep his bankrupt cabaret afloat while both the mob and his actors pursue him for the money they are owed. Also, Jimmy's a gambling addict who will bet on anything that moves, including the growth of religious cults.

There's the occasional clever notion here - Power delivers a lovely demonic rant as Jimmy calculates the statistical probability of worldwide spiritual growth - but the plot is thin, the dialogue pedestrian and the script never ties up its many loose ends.

Nashman's collaborator is choreographer Nicola Pantin, who dances in the show. Her final number, in which she chases a floating scarf and tumbles with an overturned table, reveals a rather inventive spirit who can make movement not merely evocative but also directly narrative. (This dance reads as the passage from heartbreak to recovery.) The rest of her work is weaker, including a predictably emotive bit of modern dance she performs herself and a feeble little Broadway-style ensemble number leaturing squeegee kids. Meanwhile, Sarah Martyn sings a not-very-interesting ballad with no great panache; Beche Ako (of Groupe Bassan) enlivens things a bit with his version of a break-dancing businessman and John T. Davis slows them right down with his lethargic accompaniment of jazz organ. Power segues between some amusingly hyper work in the dramatic scenes and a performance as the MC that owes far too much to Joel Grey's work in Cabaret.

Indeed, there's seldom a new idea here, as Nashman steals not only from Cabaret and pop-culture cliches, but also from a previous Toronto show that he himself directed, Stan Rogal's The Three Penny Epic Cabaret. His style would have to be much more slick and knowing for any of his borrowings to pass as amusing quotations, and much richer to effectively marry references to Bathurst Street and squeegee kids with such outdated images as a nun in a black habit or mobsters in trench coats.

Nashman writes in his program noles that the cabaret acts reflect back on the world in which Jimmy lives, but his show never effectively explains what kind of world that might be, and the acts themselves are too dull to be reflective.