Review: Cabarats, presented by Verum Arts

Just from its title, you can tell Cabarats doesn’t want to be taken seriously. Chock full of cheese puns and hammy noir/gangster pastiche dialogue, the show is a veritable charcuterie board of delight.

I attended the show’s first performance on Thursday the 25th. The Mix Bar was a perfect venue, with its floorspace utilised as both seating and stage. Staff members serve plates of cheese to guests, and one has to point out that one of the seats isn’t for the audience – it’s part of the set. Tucked in the back of the bar is a small band. From where I was sitting I could see drums, a piano, an upright bass, and a small brass section.

Set in the fictional bar Cheddar Off Alone, Cabarats frames its story around a power struggle in the local cheese dealing scene, and one key question: who is the Big Cheese? Around this premise it constructs a two act comedy musical with one location and six characters. The songs are fun, upbeat, and deliver narrative beats as well as emotional ones. The cast are each the spitting image of their character archetypes. It’s hard to single out performers in this talented group, but August Cocks and Isaac Ruthenberg were a particular delight.

There were a few production errors over the course of the show: small lighting cue errors, an awkward transition from intermission into Act Two. Even though a ‘rat track’ was set up through the audience for characters to walk through before we started, I was still asked to stand to make way for Ruthenberg. Worse, at what should have been the shows’ heights—it’s loudest, most powerful songs—the cast were, at times, completely inaudible due to the live band.

These might have been small errors. I attended their first performance, after all. Besides, the stellar acting and choreography meant that even during the inaudible act one closing song, I could still glean story beats. With a higher budget and a professional venue, Verum Arts could be on their way to producing a local theatre hit.