Poonie's Cabaret
Poonie’s Cabaret is Links Hall’s venue for improvisation and works-in-progress. Featuring artists working in many different creative realms – dance, music, improvisation, puppetry, performance art, theatre, voguing, freestyle rapping, drag, burlesque, cheerleading, stand-up comedy, etc. Poonie’s Cabaret was created by Selene Carter and is named in loving memory for Poonie Dodson, a much-loved Chicago dancer/choreographer who died of AIDS in the early 90s. Audience members are asked for a $5 donation. Proceeds from the cabaret go to the Links Hall Duncan Erley Coming Out of the Closet Fund, which is periodically awarded to artists whose work explores the realms of healing, gay activism, and spiritual and sexual transformation. www.linkshall.org *Poonie’s Cabaret is also on Facebook.
*Proceeds benefit the Links Hall Duncan Erley Coming Out of the Closet Fund for artists whose work explores the realms of healing, gay activism, and spiritual and sexual transformation.
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Poonie's Cabaret
By Sid Smith
In these days of comic fests and the danger that mass entertainment is all but neutralizing the gay factor in art (e.g. "Glee), it was a delight to attend "Poonie's Cabaret" Monday at Links Hall and learn that twists on gender can still be anarchic, irreverent and zany.
Rougher than rough, come-as-you-are, the indoor equivalent of the street musician, this benefit isn't about refinement, perfected technique or artful subtlety. The production unfolded with almost rehearsal nonchalance, partly due to the lean theatrics of the venue and partly arising from the bleacher bonhomie as palpable as Monday's heat and humidity. Jyl Fehrenkamp, who hosts in her guise as "Jyldo," dutifully spread mats on the playing area before the program began to provide extra seats for the crowd--usher as well as emcee.
Fehrenkamp's style proved part of the fun. Hers is an almost offhanded comic delivery, not so much a matter of telling jokes as slipping them in as asides. After predicting this would be "the greatest Poonie's ever," she quickly added, as a footnote, that she makes that claim every time. She makes appealing use of her gangly form and rubbery limbs, often appearing about to keel over or trip, but always, in fact, in sly command of her goofy little gestures and physical witticisms. She also provided a fine bit herself, a few song parodies and lots and lots of Tiger Beat-like pictures of the late Corey Haim, a teen idol around the time Fehrenkamp and her contemporaries would have been fans. All generations eventually tweak their tweendom, but Haim is something of a natural guilty pleasure, so promising once ("The Lost Boys"), so ignominious in decline. Mercilessly, Fehrenkamp offered a version of "My Favorite Things" that detailed Haim's drugs of choice, and, looking upward, comforted him that Lindsay Lohan is surely on her way soon to keep him heavenly company.
The other eight acts on the bill, mixing performance art comedy and movement, made for an inconsistent melange, but who cares? Each act was brief, and you didn't wait long until an individual hit a mark or the next act showed up to amp up the excitement. Amanda Crockett, midway or so through the line-up, is an immensely gifted comic movement artist, never saying a word her whole act but daffy and entertaining in scrunching her neck into her torso in such a way as to create a living cartoon character, managing a simple and "Stomp"-like interaction with the audience involving her entrance ovation and gracefully convincing us that she's under water for a time.
The duo from the Under Construction Dance Project delivered an engaging duet, colored by their own ingenious gestures and hand effects as by traditional dance, and Joshua Radcliffe's choreographic entry boasted interesting poses and offbeat arranges for its six women. Samantha Allen's gold-lame-clad diva does a mean, funny dance about a guy she's trying to get, replete with a priceless crawl set to "I Think We're Alone Now." Jessica Hudson took the lyrics to "Mr. Cellophane" from "Chicago" to literal heights.
An artist billed as Rocco Granite delivered a solid finale. Dressed in clownish attire and aided by two helpers who climbed on ladders and operated paper-cutting machines and emptied huge bags of shredded material, he/she danced, preened and survived a snowfall of paper, loving scored by Fats Waller.
