Monday in the Dark with George

The Duplex, NYC, April 15, 2018

Reviewed by Chris Struck for Cabaret Scenes

Monday in the Dark with George is a play on Sunday in the Park with George in name only. In essence, perhaps a slight tinge as well.

However, the meeting of the minds of George Winters (pictured), Helen Baldassare, Jay Rogers, Bobby Peaco (piano) and Gerry Geddes (director) produced something whimsical, well-executed, and top notch in its simultaneous creativity and originality. In this 25th anniversary edition, the fantastic group brought out a saucy collection of parodies and true originals that struck again and again with the audience.

Each performer started off with a solo song, then Winters came back for another, singing, “It gets better, so much better, so you better stick around,” from “It Gets Better.” In fact, it was apt to say, because it got even better with each song. To pick out a personal favorite from each performer, I’d have to say for Rogers it was “I’d Planned You a Marvelous Funeral,” which he sang as if he were looking at the open casket of a dear lover or friend. From Winters, I really enjoyed “Eggs in the Rain,” where he put on a pair of glasses, threw his voice to make it a little nerdy, and joked that he’d stand in the rain for hours with a half a dozen eggs waiting to see the girl who’d invited him over for rice and beans. As for Baldassare, she was a pistol every time she took the stage, but you really couldn’t get any better than her intensity in “The Girl Who Put the ‘Sin’ in Cincinnati.” The lyrics danced across the states and the world, rhyming traits of people or types of behaviors with various locations creating an incredibly literal tongue-twister. Simply wow.

There were certainly some close rivals to each of these, but perhaps the best single line from a song was when Rogers sang “Who is tending the bars?” during “Cabaret Convention,” where everyone else was invited to sing. Winters, the mastermind behind the clever variations and permutations of the songs shared a little bit about the inspiration for them late in the show. Remarking that he is often asked “where the songs come from,” he mentions that they come to him in a variety of ways, like a spark. He proceeded to relate the story of driving home one night and a cabby telling him, “there’s no U,” meaning the type of turn. He then launched into a song about telling Noah that “There’s No Ewe” on the ark.

With incredibly well-done songs and a lot of fun watching these performers work together, I highly recommend Monday in the Dark with George!