BPP cabaret good intro

I really had no idea what to expect walking into the Bloomington Playwrights Project presentation of Jennifer Bradley's one-woman-cabaret, "Vintage Blonde." I'd never been to a real cabaret. \nUnderage girls strutting their stuff in lingerie wasn't exactly the spectacular flim-flam I expected from the show. The closest I've ever been to real cabaret theater was when my tour bus flew by the Moulin Rouge in Paris over spring break. So with "Vintage Blonde" I was definitely going into a show raw, untouched by prior experience.\n"Vintage Blonde" is part of the BPP's "Cabaret Nouveau" series, produced by Candace Decker, the company manager of the BPP. An active performer of cabaret herself, Decker uses this series to bring seasoned performers of the craft to Bloomington from all over the country.\nBradley, who hails from Chicago, is the series' latest performer and has performed in "Hamlet: The Melancholy Musical" and "Shannon Doherty shoots a Porno: A Shockumentary," in which she played Tori Spelling. \nBradley trained in musical theater at Indiana Wesleyan University, where she was interested in big band and jazz music. Her performance this weekend tells the story of her decision to get into show business, her life as an aspiring actress and her love of Betty Hutton, one of the big stars at Paramount Pictures during the days of the old Hollywood studio system. \nHer monologues and speeches about her life are used primarily as segues into the songs she performs. This one-woman show is not about anything in particular. It simply provides what all good cabaret theater should: good music, good people and good times. \nSet against a blue backdrop in the BPP theater, Bradley sang songs by Rogers and Hart, Irving Berlin and Frank Loesser. For someone as young as myself, the songs were not immediately familiar, but somewhere deep in my mind I knew I had heard them before. And having taken the Communication and Culture Department's Hollywood history class was helpful.\nI will, however, most certainly connect the songs with Bradley forever because her performance was consistently warm and charming.\nOccasionally joined by Decker, Bradley's songs were always lively and sung with gusto. One special treat was "Hello, Hello," a song Bradley's friend Eric Lane Barnes wrote about her life as a "musical theater whore" -- a phrase he coined because she will play any role, take off any amount of clothing and assume any position for a role. Other gems included "The Lady is a Tramp" and "I got the Sun in the Morning."\nThe show would have benefited from a more casual setting -- perhaps someplace with a few tables, a bar, a grand piano and smoke swirling around little candles that flicker on red checked tablecloths. Even though that scene was not possible in the BPP's limited space, libations, as Bradley called them, were offered courtesy of the Oliver Winery. They were served to guests entirely on the honor system, and in case my mother is reading: Yes, Mom, I honored the system.\nBradley closed the show with a hilarious Swedish language version of the ABBA hit "Fernando." Before performing the song, Bradley told how as a young girl she had virtually stalked the lead singer of ABBA, Anni-Frid Lyngstad, on the phone and how the obsession has lingered into her adult years. \nIt is fitting that she chose to sing "Fernando." It is the only one of ABBA's mega hits that is not featured in the new musical "Mamma Mia," for which Bradley was not cast after relating her ABBA-stalking tale to the producers at her callback. \nThe success of "Vintage Blonde," has wet my theater palette for the many "Cabaret Nouveaus" to come. If future performers have the zeal and heart that Bradley brought to her performance, they will surely be treasures. Anyone who enjoys a casual evening of silliness and song will certainly enjoy this new series at the BPP.