Rene Foss is a working airline flight attendant, a writer, a lyricist, a musical comedy cabaret performer, and one hell of a funny gal. In her day job, flying around the world and distributing what passes for airline food, she's seen it all from the galley side of the plane, and Around the World in a Bad Mood -- albeit the show's Convenient Airlines is a fiction -- plays on every flier's worst suspicions. With the able help of Hector Coris, Julia Barnett and Brett Stoepler, she keeps her audience laughing as the revue visits the varied travelers she gets to serve aloft, familiar travel snafus and airline personnel's equally familiar litany of unresponsive rejoinders to passenger crises.

The three players (Brett Stoepler is primarily the offstage voice) catalog many a flight attendants everyday incidents... and gripes. There's the "I Hate Flying" number, the attendants' competition to serve the big-name Hollywood producer, the flight personnel's secret language song delivered by a female attendant-cum-Storm Trooper, and a full cast number of the airline's passenger management consultants, Dewey, Cheatem and Howe (read that over a few times until the parody is clear).

Through it all, the players -- and especially Foss with her dazzling smile, animated helpfulness, and over-hyped exuberance -- perform with perpetual tongue in cheek. The revue is a delightful interlude and made to order for the intimate confines of cabaret's small rooms, There's also a one-woman version of Around the World in a Bad Mood that Foss plays in other cities, and -- if you miss your chance to catch Foss in the flesh -- a book with the same title that she proudly advises has sold 50,000 copies since its publication five years ago.

Around the World in a Bad Mood plays again at Rose's Turn on June 28th, then on September 7th, 14th and 21st.

Peter Leavy
Cabaret Scenes
June 21, 2007
www.cabaretscenes.org