ACT’s New Voices Showcase is the Real Glee 3D

It’s summer and things are supposed to be quiet theatrically, but not at ACT Theatre. If you have a $25 ACT Pass, this August must feel like a golden age.

You no doubt already saw Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (our review), maybe popped in for Ian Bell’s anonymous memoirs Seattle Confidential, then last night was the show tunes showcase New Voices, August 17 is short film showcase Rawstock (featuring women filmmakers Karn Junkinsmith, Michaela Olsen and Bri Meyer, and Kristen Grey-Rockmaker), and the 19th brings back Nick Garrison’s neo-cabaret The Love Markets, performing Summer Nacht.

But wait, as they say, that’s not all. Still to come is the Icicle Creek Theatre Festival, with staged readings of In You for Me for You by Mia Chung (“two sisters from North Korea escape one harsh and unforgiving reality only to enter another very foreign world”), directed by Sheila Daniels; and  The Whale by Sam Hunter (“a poetic, disturbing and strangely beautiful journey through the life of a small-town shut-in named Charlie”), directed by Andrew K. Russell.

Last but not least, there’s The Beebo Brinker Pulp Cabaret, inspired by the Beebo Brinker pulp fiction series and set in a 1950s Greenwich Village underground gay-bar “rife with pin-ups, intelligent burlesque, live music and an interactive cast.”

If you can make $25 go further than that, you are the Warren Buffett of theater-going. New Voices, by the way, is a one-night-only experience, but they will return this December, and I am here to tell you that if you own even a single CD of a musical or have a ticket stub to Glee 3D, this is your night. Circle the next showcase in red on the calendar.

I walked in, as per usual, a little vague on what to expect. I guess I thought it’d be something like Village Theater West, singing workshop songs. That was enough to tempt me downtown, but in fact the program included Diana Huey (just back from The Glee Project semi-finals), Ryah Nixon (through with a year of touring with 9 to 5 The Musical), Vicki Noon (Wicked, Mamma Mia), and Louis Hobson (Next to Normal, People in the Picture).

18 songs were on the program–many in the bouncy, up-tempo rock musical “key” and making use of a seemingly newfound affection for profanity-studded lyrics. The Bullitt Cabaret was teeming with ingenues and Dauntlesses, and their proud parents and theater friends. (Both shows sold out.)

Musicals are the great over-sharers, aren’t they? Something about bursting into song in public goes over better if that’s, in fact, what you expect from having hung around with people cast in musicals. They really do that. Many of the songs opted for simple interior monologue, or could easily have been pop songs (more anthemic than dramatic). Disney musicals have really done a number on subtext.

But more than a few were stand-outs: the Lowdermilk/Kerrigan “Avalanche” flipped the metaphor movingly; Chris Jeffries “America” was gorgeous, with a descending figure on the cello that sticks in you and aches with loneliness; Kitt/Yorkey “Hey Kid” (aka “Hobson’s Song”) wryly observed reluctant fatherhood; Burkell/Loesel “I Really Really Love You” pulled no comic punches in its ode to stalkers; and Withers/Jackson “Old Mr. Drew” took TMI to searingly nonchalant heights.

In between songs, host Brandon Ivie hopped onstage and purred his way through frequently hilarious and always amiable introductions, with R.J. Tancioco pulling Paul Schaefer-like duties at the piano. Sadly the program doesn’t list who sang what, or I’d be able to regale you with who was brassy and who sounded like caramel.