Members of Loyola’s on-campus theatrical production program, Hannon Theatre Company, who put on Cabaret last spring, went to see a professional production of the musical at Pantages Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles. An event celebrating the culmination of Hannon’s successful rendition, the outing was popular for a wide variety of students––from cast to crew––involved with Loyola’s telling of Joe Masteroff’s iconic story based on a 1930s Nazi cabaret, senior Redmong Ang said.
In addition to Loyola cubs, female cast members from HTC attended the event, as well. Eleanor Hammond, a senior at the Episcopal School of Los Angeles, who played “Texas” in HTC’s production, said that she really enjoyed seeing the professional production.
“After working intently on Hannon Theatre’s production of Cabaret, it was a true delight to see another version of a show that I was so familiar with,” Hammond said. “The experience was lovely to share with other Hannon Theatre members as we could all relate to and understand specific choices the director made in the broadway show.”
According to senior Matt Kozakowski, who was an ensemble member of HTC’s cast, Loyola’s production and the version he saw at Pantages differed in that the professional performance had more of a bawdy nature.
“Their version was much more raunchy than ours, but the main difference was that we had huge dance numbers, and [at Pantages]they only had at most six cast members dancing on stage at a given time.”
Ang, the assistant stage manager for Loyola’s rendering, said that he agreed with Kozakowski’s statement.
“Throughout the play, I compared it to what we did, and I noticed that their jokes and costumes were more adult-oriented because they didn’t have the restrictions of being a high-school production,” Ang said.
Seeing both the Los Angeles and the New York productions, Kozakowski said the setting of the play also played a vital role in its reception by Loyola students.
“Even the two professional performances were different,” he said. “In New York, we sat at cocktail tables with three other people, but it’s not easy enough to alter an entire theatre for every place that the show travels to, so the show at Pantages was regular stadium seating like at school.”
With the dawn of the new school year, HTC finalizing the cast of the upcoming fall play Fahrenheit 451 based on Ray Bradbury’s classic 1953 novel. It will debut in mid-November.
