Billie Roe: Monopoly

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Billie Roe

Monopoly

Metropolitan Room, NYC, September 9, 2016

Reviewed by Rob Lester for Cabaret Scenes

Photo: Adam Woomer
Photo: Adam Woomer

My advice, in a word, about the Monopoly-centric Billie Roe show: GO!!!

It is the most compelling and bravest cabaret room experience I have had this year. Imaginative, thought-provoking, risky, moving, and thoroughly theatrical, the commanding performer Billie Roe and her daring director, Mark Nadler (no stranger himself to pushing the envelope) have put together a stunning evening of songs and monologues. And, yes, it is all anchored by that board game of Monopoly, which members of her family played with  bloodthirsty intensity and competitive zeal while she was growing up. As many Americans spent their own too-many-to-count hours with the popular game, in younger days, there’s a safe bet that this nostalgia factor brings in an instant and smiling recognition factor with audience members, to pull them into her world. It works and works instantly.  Now one must ask the inevitable question: “O.K., now what?”

What the triumvirate of Roe, Nadler, and pianist/sometime singer and sometime character/Musical Director Steven Ray Watkins bring forth is an accomplished, nuanced set of captivating vignettes as the versatile, riveting Roe transforms herself into fully realized characters she imagines might reside on the streets in the different socioeconomic neighborhoods in the game.  It’s a brilliant idea as executed, but not one many would try, let alone pull off, especially in a cabaret setting where folks traditionally expect just “patter” and the traditional raison d’etre is to let the audience get to know the performer as her real self. (Not to worry; that happens, too, in the commentary between scenes.) It’s like in the game of Monopoly—you might say that every time the show takes a roll of the dice and lands on the square where you have to take an orange “Chance” card, they take a chance and it pays off. Some of the characters bring us the dark side of life, but orange is the new noir.

These invented people live very different lives in the low-rent district (like the magenta-colored street of Baltic Avenue),  the middle class (described with ironic bemusement in terms of the game’s corner squares as “somewhere between ‘Go to Jail’ and ‘Free Parking'”), and the fancy-schmancy digs on Park Place and Boardwalk. On the poor side of town, there is an elegance in the sorrow of a widow alone in her apartment, except for her memories of years there and her late musician husband’s piano.

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There’s gloom in the room with sadness that lingers as the woman, complete with convincing accent, revisits the increasingly resonating “September Song.” On the other side of the tracks, or other side of the board, with a plastic conniving smile, overly lilting speaking voice, and condescending manner towards those poor little poor people, she becomes the society lady whose husband is running for mayor. Hosting a photo op garden party, she sings that ode to flowers that haven’t quite bloomed, “Hurry! It’s Lovely Up Here” from On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.  At first oh-so proper, the dippy, desperate dear tries to segue into more modern tempi that fits as well as those tiny silver Monopoly pieces, the top hat and the thimble, would fit on your head or finger. Just when we think we are comfortable chuckling at the would-be mayor’s wife, a homeless woman enters, another Roe creation we can’t turn away from and who breaks our hearts. The script, which she wrote herself, is filled with precise language choices that define the people, and Billie Roe the writer brings much for Billie Roe the actress and singer to work with and mold. Her detail about the family championships and attitudes (theirs and hers) are as crisp as the paper money in a newly-purchased Monopoly game. We feel the tension between Billie, who favors building up the low-income rentals, and brother Big Bob who only has eyes for the ritzy streets, while little sister Bratty Patty pouts and grandparents cheer from the sidelines back in the 1960s. We’re there. It’s then.

Billie Roe’s day job, not so incidentally, is one involved with affordable housing. So she’s aware of the real-life stakes and struggles that is no “game.” This brings a whole new level to the piece, a reality check and earned perspective. What’s so triumphant and impressive is how the actress-singer fully becomes the different people, and her whole body changes, with gestures and facial expressions that are intrinsic and in sync, when speaking or singing.

Eyes being the mirror of the soul, we see fully-formed sympathetic souls in her eyes and soulful singing. Even those who have experienced the performers’ rich and dramatic past shows, such as an early “comeback” piece on movie femme fatales and the Tom Waits repertoire, will see and hear new colors. Her voice is rich, with some judicious but exciting belting on some notes and phrases, a velvet sound when crooning, and an unbridled joy in the opener “Let’s Play Monopoly,” sung as herself. As the show winds down, the root of all evil (corporate and otherwise) becomes the bottom line. Included as a nod to financial greed and living high is Stephen Sondheim’s Dick Tracy film number “More,” as bursting-with-bliss Billie, willy nilly tossing “cash” in the air, intoxicated with the coveted greenbacks the game actually provides in a variety of hues. Not that the largely thrilled and rapturous audience needed a subliminal suggestion to cry “Encore!” …but right after “More,” that’s the word some shouted out. And we got more.

In addition to sensitive and calibrated piano work, Steven Ray Watkins is a potent and crucial co-star as a “dude” of a pal, a guy calling the shots and cuts when the society lady is filming her piece. And his singing, whether harmony/backup or duet lines, is strong and evocative. Arrangements are a collaboration between him and the director.

When not singing about the game, Billie Roe is involved with another kind of board—the board of directors of MAC, the Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs. On the 15th of this month, she’ll be one of many singers in Ricky Ritzel’s Broadway, the revue at Don’t Tell Mama. This busy woman also just finished a summer as a talent judge in the Metropolitan Room’s MetroStar competition, something she won herself several years ago. And Monopoly returns October 15 and November 20. As the directions to the game read, “Do not pass “GO”; do not collect $200….”  Just GO!

Rob Lester

2015 is native New Yorker Rob Lester's eighth year as contributing writer, beginning by reviewing a salute to Frank Sinatra, whose recordings have played on his personal soundtrack since the womb. (His Cabaret Scenes Foundation member mom started him with her favorite; like his dad, he became an uber-avid record collector/ fan of the Great American Songbook's great singers and writers.) Soon, he was attending shows, seeking out up-and-comers and already-came-ups, still reading and listening voraciously. He also writes for www.NiteLifeExchange.com and www.TalkinBroadway.com, has been cabaret-centric as awards judge, panel member/co-host, and produces benefit/tribute shows, including one for us.