'Cabaret' turns Taylor Down Under into dinner theater for 'One Hour'

Taylor Down Under transformed itself Thursday night into a diner featuring a theater-like performance of “Just Another Hour,” a cabaret performed by ten students from the school of music.

Shari Scofield, the show's producer and TDU's coordinator, arranged the setting so it accommodated the ten performers, a piano, chairs and stools on a small stage. Waitresses walked around dressed in black and white, offering dessert options from Java City to audience members.

Nicholas Wuerhmann, the show's director and JMU's assistant professor of voice, decided to use this unique style of performing because Cabaret-style shows are uncommon in the college scene, he said. To help the performers find pieces that “can be adapted to any performer's individual strengths.”

Wuehrmann said, “I molded the one-hour [cabaret] piece so that it would have some great flow to it. It starts off with the feelings we all have in college of the close bonds of friendship. Then it moves on to the exploration of first love, or new love. Eventually, the piece takes a turn and shows, through song, what happens with love when it doesn't turn out as we hoped.”

The Ccabaret represented some of Broadway's most famous shows. The performance included pieces from well-known musicals such as “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Bye, Bye, Birdie” and “Chicago.” Some songs were up-tempo and performed comically, while others were slow-paced and serious.

Sophomore Heather Stewart, who attended the performance, said that her favorite piece was “Matchmaker,” performed by junior Joan Philbin and seniors Kristen Hummerston and Tina Ghandchilar.

“The ‘Matchmaker' song was adorable … I enjoyed how they personalized it with dialogue,” Stewart said of the three performers' choral banter concerning the pros and cons of being matched with a man. Stewart also enjoyed the pieces that were performed by all ten students. She said that the performers' different personalities were exemplified in the ensemble pieces.

“The audience reacted more to performers who seemed more enthused about being on stage and put their heart into their song,” Stewart said. “Everyone was excellent but there were definite hams in the group.”

Senior performer Patrick O'Herron also shared views on which pieces the audience liked most.

“I think the audience really enjoyed the comedic numbers like ‘Matchmaker' and ‘This Can't Be Love' just because they were funny and broke up a lot of the lovey-dovey and dramatic pieces of the cabaret,” Herron said.

“This Can't Be Love” evoked much laughter from the audience because of O'Herron's theatrics, which involved him acting physically ill as a side effect of being in love.

Overall, it seemed the cabaret was a success, based on the audience's incessant post-performance applause and the professionalism with which the students performed in the small space that they were given.

O'Herron said that after the performance ended, he could tell that Wuehrmann was pleased with the performance.

“I don't think our director could have been more proud of anything in his life,” he said.

TDU will feature four more presentations of the free cabaret show, at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., today and Thursday at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.