Meow Meow
Review: Meow Meow Is Wow Wow Wow at Santa Barbara Lobero
Postmodern Cabaret Show Combines Comedy, Music, and Social Commentary to Pack a Purr-Worthy Punch
From the Santa Barbara Independent
By Leslie Dinaberg
I had absolutely no idea what to expect from Thursday’s Meow Meow show at the Lobero last week, but it was so unique and entertaining, she had me purring with surprise and delight. After a glamorous, sparkly, sequined-gowned entrance — which she did twice — providing the audience with red roses to shower her with the second time around, Meow Meow expertly set the musically eccentric tone with Laurie Anderson’s “The Dream Before” (which includes the fantastic lyrics “Hansel and Gretel are alive and well / and they’re living in Berlin / She is a cocktail waitress / He had a part in a Fassbinder film / And they sit around at night now drinking schnapps and gin / And she says: ‘Hansel, you’re really bringing me down’ / And he says: ‘Gretel, you can really be a bitch’” ) followed by a string of gorgeously sung torch songs from the Weimar Republic, many in their original German.
Her one-of-a-kind, postmodern cabaret show — billed by presenter UCSB Arts & Lectures as Sequins and Satire, Divas and Disruptors: The Wild Women of the Weimar Republic — was a fabulous concoction of high and low culture, and equally enjoyable in both regards. Her chanteuse style musical performance was intermixed with broad comedy at every turn, including bringing my husband up onstage to do a kick line as part of a chorus of middle-aged men, doing her own smoke effects with what looked like a child’s toy, and having a crew member physically turn her around and around on stage, Lazy Susan–style, while she gamely channeled Marlene Dietrich and Lotte Lenya, with numbers from the Weimar repertoire.