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UnCabaret Sunday 4/21!

It’s don’t-miss comedy from Sam Pancake, Rebecca Corry, John Riggi and Jackie Kashian plus musical guests Judith Owen and Allee Willis!

We’re thrilled to have Grammy, Emmy, Tony and Webby award-winning and nominated songwriter Allee Willis back on stage at UnCabaret. Her hit songs include The Pointer Sisters’ “Neutron Dance,” Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September” and “Boogie Wonderland,” and The Rembrandt’s “I’ll Be There For You” (aka the theme song from “Friends”). She’s a true original artist who works in many mediums, and her performances at UnCabaret bring down the house every time. Find out more at http://alleewillis.com/ or check her out performing “September” at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3LOfSBo18s

Allee and the above-mentioned UnCabaret favorites will all be returning to our stage this Sunday, and they’ll be there for you!

https://www.facebook.com/events/180289105457810/

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UnCabaret is UnCabachella this Sunday 4/14!

While some people will be getting crazy for three overindulgent days at Coachella in the desert this weekend, the lucky ones will be getting just the right dose of music and comedy in downtown L.A. at UnCabachella — it’ll be like three days of fun rolled into one glorious night.

No road trip, no dirt, no Porta-Potties, no parking hassles, no overpriced beer, no sunburn, no trying to see all your favorite bands on every stage and not miss anything or pass out from exhaustion.

On just one stage you’ll find a star-studded lineup of hilarious comedy from Drew Droege, Cheri Oteri, Rebecca Corry and Casey Wilson, plus cool music from The Ooks of Hazzard, Ellyn and Robbie, and Sharon McConochie.

And it’s all hosted by Mistress of UnCabaret Beth Lapides and featuring Musical Director Mitch Kaplan on keyboards and Drummer Denise Fraser.

Who knows, we might even get a little crazy, too — but at least we’ll be comfortable!

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Magic is in the Air at UnCab

LA Culture Hound review of 3/10/13

Beth Lapides has just returned from a visit to the Magic Castle and thinks magic may be in the air tonight. It’s hard to disagree. Inside the magical speakeasy at First and Hope, time bends and conflates and it’s not necessarily due to today’s time change. Perhaps it’s being in the midst of exceptionally strong talent that allows for time to pass so quickly, or maybe it is magic. “Tonight we’re going there,” Beth announces. And away we go!

I’m embarrassed to admit that I have never seen Julie Goldman before tonight. Definitely my loss. She burns up the stage with a kind of kinetic Kineson charisma. “I’m gonna start it with a lez bang tonight,” she says and man, does she. You can almost feel the white-hot heat emanating from her as she takes to the stage. Whether she is riffing on the smug tendencies of people from the Bay Area (“I’m wearing dirt and tampon strings”) or squeegee-ing her mom’s shower, her humor is raucous, volcanic and sweet. When she picks up the guitar and sings and plays like a rock star, I’m hooked. Her song Commitment Ceremony is seared into my brain. “You can have your commitment ceremonies in the back of the bus.”

It seems everyone is dying in Rebecca Corry’s life, including her 102 year-old grandmother, 42-year-old landlord, a few old dogs, her accountant and a baby bird that fell from the sky and landed right in front of her. “The women who are going to die alone are led onto the stage,” she says, digging into a story about a wedding bouquet toss where she meets her match: Jennifer Love Hewitt. Turns out Rebecca and Jennifer wrestled so competitively for the flower bouquet it split in half, cutting Jennifer Love Hewitt’s hand and forcing her to fall dramatically to the ground. Just imagining Rebecca Corry holding the mangled bouquet while J Love flails on the floor brings a smile to my face. She ends her set with a hilarious story about assiduously trying to avoid wiping her young nephew’s butt to which every childless aunt and uncle can probably relate. When her insistent nephew demands that she wipe his butt, she describes it like this: “You know when you kill a spider?” This girl cracks me up.

Sam Morrow from The Ooks of Hazzard takes to the stage with his guitar and disarming candor. “I don’t normally play at places where my feet don’t stick to the floor when I walk.” Then he adds: “I’m also afraid of comedians.” Ha! He has an unnerving effect on the women in the room. You can feel them leaning in, absorbing him deeply. With a knit hat, scruffy beard and bohemian vibe, he doesn’t at first glance fall into the category of swoon-worthy. But when he opens his mouth to sing it’s a whole different story. With swoony lyrics like “You remind me who I was and who I want to be,” sung with growly perfection, who wouldn’t be cast in his spell?

“I won Best Director in the world,”Jill Soloway wryly tells us. Fresh from her Best Director win at Sundance for her filmAfternoon Delight, she admits that “something was on the back burner while I was at Sundance.” A year ago her father, a 6’4” psychiatrist, interrupted their weekly Sunday morning conversation with a question: “Jilly? Are you sitting down?” She tells a tale that I won’t disclose here, let’s just say that every family has a story and the Soloway story has the good fortune to have an expert storyteller telling it.

Lauren Weedman, in a sloppy bun, pings and ricochets from one subject to the next. Her subjects unfurl in steady stream-of-consciousness. Her digressions have digressions, but she has an uncanny knack to always bring it back and rein herself in. Whether she’s discussing the sloshing cosmo in her aging father’s hands or having a social collision with singer Ani DiFranco, she can’t help but be uproariously funny and achingly self-aware.

Tall and willowy Marcella Detroit (from Shakespeare’s Sister) in an Edith Piaf bob, sings plaintively, “Everyody’s f-cking but me, I just can’t get laid. My sex life is so gloomy even my dog won’t do me.” A tart soprano with a naughty streak, she sings Good Girl Down (“As in you can’t keep a…”), her first single from her album The Vehicle, which will be released on April 22. Birthday boy Mitch Kaplan on piano and Denise Fraser on drums tore it up.

If there is one take away from tonight’s edition of UnCabaret, it’s that situations aren’t funny, it’s the people observing them. What’s funny about wiping your nephew’s butt? Squeegee-ing your mom’s shower? Your aging father drinking a cosmo? Nothing. But when these performers are talking about it? Everything. Tonight’s line-up demonstrates that there is power that comes from diving into the stories and feelings that most of us prefer to avoid. And comic gold. Perhaps Jill Soloway sums up tonight’s theme during her set: “Good and bad, they go together.”

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LA CULTURE HOUND

Review of 2/17/13 UnCabaret by LA Culture Hound

Each UnCabaret show is different. Some nights are raucous and profane, others are gutsy and confessional. Tonight’s show struck a certain elegiac tone. As always, Beth Lapides displayed her gifts at alchemy by assembling the perfect blend of talent to make for a mesmerizing night.

Kira Soltanovich speaks of sitting beside her 101-year-old grandmother, dying in hospice. The others have gone out to smoke “because all Russian Jews legally have to smoke.” Kira kisses her grandmother’s forehead, whispers in her ear. “It’s okay, babushka, everyone went to smoke. Go now, it’s safe.” Her cousins are coming out of the elevator, and she’s thinking go, go, go! “And she passed.” The rabbi in attendance mentions that he also does Bar Mitzvahs. “The rabbi is networking in front of my dead grandmother,” she sighs.

Patton Oswalt at UnCabaret

More about Patton Oswalt, Kira Soltonovich and Judith Owen here.

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SAY THE WORD: BLEEDING HEARTS

WE WERE SKIRBALLING!

Great time tonight at Say The Word: Bleeding Hearts at The Skirball Cultural Center. Thanks to a great line up: Tim Bagley, Carlos Kotkin, Cindy Chupack, Wayne Federman, Jon Kinnally and making her stage debut 18 year old Natalie Lindeman with a truly lovely story about falling ad falling in love that is slated to appear in the New York Times’ Modern Love column in March.

We looked at love from so many different angles: first love, bad boy love, having a crush on someone with a heart transplant, the death of a loved one, STD’s, on line dating, divorce, red flags. Laughed. Feel better.

Here’s a pic of the crazy space ship room! Next Say The Word April 21. The New Me!