Jayke Workman
Down With Love!
Post Office Café and Cabaret, Provincetown, MA, June 13, 2026
Reviewed by John Amodeo
I may not have known who Broadway performer Jayke Workman (Chicago) was or their music director/pianist Cullen Curth (Just in Time), but I sure do now after having seen their sparkling cabaret show Down with Love! performed on June 13 at CabaretFest 2026 at the Post Office Café and Cabaret. Workman is a non-binary, classically trained countertenor—or perhaps a male soprano. They sang with enormous range, reaching warm resonant low notes and coloratura high notes as crisp as a summer Sancerre. This allowed them to sing just about anything, and they did. They shared their exquisite instrument and exhibited a lovable and winning stage presence and a fun gift of gab that made their cabaret show delightfully thrilling to experience.
Embracing this year’s CabaretFest theme of songs from the 1930s and ’40s, Workman finely crafted a show bookended by two Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg songs. They opened with the show’s title song “Down with Love.” They sang it slowly at first then it jumped to triple time with surprising agility. The show ended with the classic “Over the Rainbow,” sung gorgeously and respectfully as written. Curth provided lush, nearly orchestral piano accompaniment—no surprise; Curth conducts pit orchestras on Broadway).
The reference to The Wizard of Oz had special significance to Workman. With smart and witty patter, they shared stories of growing up in a small midwestern town knowing they were gay and coming out at an early age. As a child Workman received a pair of ruby slippers as a gift from their grandmother and proudly wore them everywhere. Whenever they grew out of them, their parents bought them another pair. Telling us this established an interesting subtext for “I’m Wishing” (Frank Churchill/Larry Morey, from the Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs). Here they imbued their classical soprano with a vibrato like the one Adriana Caselotti used when she sang it in the film. In a more heartbreaking moment typical of a Lorenz Hart lyric, they wistfully sang “Falling in Love with Love” (Rodgers & Hart) about loving boys but not being loved back. In a coloratura interlude in the song, their voice glided up and down the scales with ease and with the conviction that unrequited love would not defeat them. That’s a weighty message for a single song that is often sung only as a frivolous ditty.
The two familiar standards Workman used to interpret finding then losing their first love, Peter, were also poignant affairs. “You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me (Harry Warren/Al Dubin) paired with “I Get a Kick Out of You” (Cole Porter) were given new shading by Workman as he pondered lost love. That led into “With a Song in My Heart” (Rodgers & Hart), which Workman brought to a heartrending yet gorgeous ending as they belted into the stratosphere with full-throttled vibrato. If that wasn’t enough, Workman brought this little three-act play to an end with the searing “Once You Lose Your Heart” (Noel Gay/Arthur Rose/Douglas Furber), which was a vocal and emotional high point of the show.
Workman delivered these stories and songs without a hint of pathos or self-pity. His upbeat determination helped build to their personal integrity and self-esteem, which then allowed their humor to shine through. Touring in theater, they found many “friends” to help heal their broken heart, which led to “I’ll String Along with You” (Warren/Dubin), which was hilariously interrupted by numerous audible Grindr notifications on their phone. This was followed by another funny bit during “Blow Gabriel, Blow” (Porter) replete with Curth using a kazoo as an ersatz trumpet and left the audience in stitches.
After their closing number, Workman returned in a new outfit that was as cathartic for the audience as it was for them. after their touching encore, Noël Coward’s “If Love Were All,” we were on our feet before we knew it. That is how much Workman had fully endeared themselves to an entire room with their talent, humor, vulnerable honesty, and love of entertaining.
