Violet

 Ouch this show sucked. I wanted to like it. I know a couple of songs from the show from both the Broadway channel and AMDA. We went because Hiptix offered $25 and Aaron had never seen Sutton Foster perform. I wish he had seen Anything Goes or Millie to really see how she shines and commands a stage.

The cast, though small, was incredibly talented. No one was slacking off. The problem was the material. The story is of Violet, a woman with an axe wound across her face (not shown in the show).  She takes a bus across the states to meet with a televangelist to "cure" her. Along the way, she meets other bus riders, including 2 soldiers who fight over her. (Aaron found this to be a bad show based off the fact that she's so ugly that everyone back home makes fun of her, but 2 soldiers that just met her fight over her like hungry wolves.)

We had great seats and the theater wasn't full. It's closing in a week, so I am assuming it wasn't popular. The American Airlines theater always plays older friendly shows. We sat on the right side, row H.

Cabaret

 Wilkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome! I'd never seen Cabaret on stage. I had a chance in 2000 to see it but decided instead to see The Producers. I'm still happy with the choice because I think the impact on the seriousness of this show would've been lost on me a bit. Alan Cumming returned to the show that won him the tony all those years ago and man, did he sell it!

We were both underwhelmed with Michelle Williams. She did all right for a film star, but she definitely didn't have the chops that we expected in this role. Granted, Sally Bowles is supposed to be annoying and slightly talentless, but Michelle couldn't act that well. I was very impressed with Danny Burstien's portrayal of Herr Shultz. Both the ending of act 1 and the finale made me feel eerie, sad, and uncomfortable. The show does such a good job of showing how the Nazi occupation started to affect the normal everyday German life and then bouncing into a fun ditty about having sex with lots of women, or living it up. 

 We had great seats at a cabaret table (thank you hip tix gold) sitting in the second to last row, and all the way to the side. The seating itself is a little odd (Aaron had to sit BEHIND me) but the sight lines were pretty good and the lighting with the table lights was so cool. We felt like we were in a real club.

 It was so nice to see it live. As a teenager I actually borrowed this cast recording (2000) from the library and I remember thinking it was so "cool" and "dangerous", but now seeing and hearing it as an adult had a different impact on me.