Summer has been rushing by too quickly.
It wasn’t until last night that I was able to get to the Yale Summer Cabaret for the first time this season and I am very glad I had the chance to catch the world premiere musical, “Fly-By-Night.”
Sadly, this is the final production of the summer and the run ends Saturday night (sorry for the late report!)
The show is a collaborative effort by artistic director Kim Rosenstock with her fellow Yale School of Drama students Will Connolly and Michael Mitnick.
“Fly-By-Night” is a funny, sad and strange piece about a group of harried, struggling New Yorkers before, during and after the great blackout in the fall of 1965. The emotions are real, but the situations and the relationships are all slightly off-kilter — we never know where the characters might be going next and how their relationships will change.
The narrator — Slate Holmgren (left, on the phone) — plays multiple roles as he tells the story of two sisters, Daphne (Alexandra Henrikson, above) and Miriam (Sarah Sokolovic) who leave their sleepy little town in the Midwest for a new life in New York. Miriam doesn’t particularly want to make the trek but her ambitious older sister Daphne is determined to become a Broadway star and she needs the car (and the company).
Meanwhile, Harold McClam (Will Connolly, above) is bored out of his skull making sandwiches in his uncle’s New York deli when he falls for Daphne and then Miriam. Uncle “Crabbie” (Austin Durant) is a harsh taskmaster who hides his own secret dreams of getting the hell out of the deli business. Durant also plays the role of Harold’s widower father in the most touching scenes in the show — the man misses his wife terribly and holds on to her memory by repeatedly listening to the opera she once coerced him into seeing (“La Traviata”).
“Fly-By-Night” is performed arena-style with the audience sitting on two sides of the initmate space — a tight three piece band plays the very catchy new songs.
Throughout the show, you are able to watch the reactions of the audience members on the other side of the playing area. It was wonderful to see the happy, engaged faces responding to a truly fresh piece of material and an excellent company of singing actors.
(For more information on the final two performances of “Fly-By-Night” go to www.summercabaret.org)
