Alessandra Fabiani, Francesca Fabiani,
Calla Fuqua, and Michael Sheppard
Home for the Holidays: Family, Friends, and Relationships
The Cabaret at Germano’s, Baltimore, MD, December 19, 2019
Reviewed by Michael Miyazaki
Photo by Michael Friedman
Alessandra Fabiani and Francesca Fabiani, sisters who have been pursuing arts careers in California, returned to the Cabaret at Germano’s to present a cabaret revue along with Calla Fuqua and Michael Sheppard. The evening was an exuberant combination of comedy, monologues, poetry, and music from various sources.
They all gave consistently strong performances throughout the evening. Alessandra Fabiani offered several songs on the theme of family including “So Big/So Small” from Dear Evan Hansen, “Mama Who Bore Me” from Spring Awakening, and “Everything I Know” from In the Heights. She also had a moving monologue from The Exonerated about dealing with the memory of a departed loved one. Francesca Fabiani handled more spoken-word material: a glistening reading of Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” an understatedly manic moment from Christopher Durang’s Laughing Wild, and a well-observed piece about the meeting of two cats. Her vocal performance of “Brutally” by Suki Waterhouse had a reserved mystique that was quite effective.
Calla Fuqua certainly knows her way around a bravura story song; she performed “Pulled” from The Addams Family, Goldrich & Heisler’s “Taylor the Latte Boy,” and Jason Robert Brown’s “I’m Not Afraid of Anything.” She was particularly good on “I Could Be Jewish for You,” bringing freshness to multiple iterations of the title theme. Michael Sheppard provided sensitive accompaniment throughout and sang touching versions of Sara Bareilles’ “Love Is Christmas” (a song that truly deserves to become a holiday standard) and “Happiness” from You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown.
The show was informed by a certain “my uncle has a barn, let’s put on a show” youthful exuberance and slap-dashness. The outside eye of a director could have made moments in the show more effective. That said, the audience was consistently entertained, and it is important to encourage younger voices in this art form for their talents and their insights. For example, it is interesting to see that Evan Hansen and In the Heights seem to be touchpoints for a younger generation, and the sketch that began the evening, written by Alessandra Fabiani, opened an honest window into the fraught nature of dating in 2019.
