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Regional Reviews: San Francisco An Audience with Meow Meow Also see Patrick's reviews of The Fox on the Fairway and Fiddler on the Roof and Richard's reviews of Life Could Be a Dream and Rapture, Blister, Burn
Meow Meow's voice is outstanding in its range and texture. She combines this with carefully chosen songs with a European flavor, terrific comic timing, improvisational wit, and some fetching audience participation. This production could be called "kamikaze cabaret" since the show seems like a shambles as she skirmishes with her two lead dancers, Michael Balderrama and Bob Gaynor, struggles with her wardrobe, and barks at the hidden staff. She even ropes members of the audience into coming onto the stage to do strange things, and crowd surfs at the end of the gig. One of the many bizarre scenes takes place at the beginning of the show. After she sings Iain Grandage's "Tonight I'm Yours," Meow Meow looks out at the audience and says, "What, no flowers for me?" None, of course, arrive. She then exits stage right for a moment and comes back with a bouquet of beautiful roses. She throws each rose separately to fans sitting in the first row of the theatre with instructions that they are to throw each rose back onto the stage. Weird, but it does bring the house down. Meow Meow has a great back-up band that includes conductor Lance Horne on piano, Russ Gold on drums and percussion, Jessica Ivy on cello, and Pat Moran on bass, guitar, mandolin and trombone. The musical feast is directed by Emma Rice, who directed The Wild Bride at Berkeley Rep. An Audience with Meow Meow is calamitous, camp and very droll, and built on Meow Meow's incredible vocal clout and imagination. It runs through October 19th, 2014, at the Roda Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 2015 Addison Street, Berkeley. For performance schedule and tickets, visit www.berkeleyrep.org. Their next production will be last year's hit at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Party People, opening on October 17.
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