By Laura Lothian, On-line Forty-Niner April 28, 1997
A woman clad in leather spanking a man with a fly swatter, while singing opera, is funny to Cal State Long Beach Music Professor Justus Matthews.
So is a "well-hung" grim reaper answering the wails of an unlucky-in-love woman.
Matthews, who in collaboration with theater arts major Davis Mejia, has included both images for their show, "An Evening of Cabaret & Buffa" playing at the CSULB Soroptomist House Monday night.
"Buffa is a play on the word 'buffoonery,'" Matthews said. "People hear the word 'opera' and they get turned off. Even if you don't like opera, you're going to laugh at this show ... just at the costumes."
"An Evening ..." is broken into three parts. The first 40 minutes of the show will be a cabaret, which will meld into a 30-minute opera, then circle back for a 15-minute cabaret closing.
Cabarets heyday, like surrealism, took place mostly in France and Germany, during the 1920s and '30s, said Matthews, who casually dropped names like Ernst, Magritte and Dali the way a movie producer would mention Cruise, DeNiro and Streisand.
"I really liked the idea of doing a cabaret," Matthews said. "Cabarets are very dark and sexual, well at least until the Nazis shut it down."
He described cabarets as a "psycho-sexual" way of dealing with the fate of modern women being manipulated by man.
"Usually the woman is led into doom and becomes a prostitute or something."
"An Evening ..." will be no different. The show opens with a woman, played by Paula Riley, entering an abandoned tavern. She starts to re-live her past. She approaches a drummer (Angela Tabor) and a pianist (Mark Uranker), who remove their shrouds and begin to play. Her ex-love (Mejia) materializes and they play out their tortured history.
"We never talk," Matthews, who is also a clarinetist and composer, said. "It's song all the way through the show."
Matthews described cabarets as a means of exploring one's darker side, that in its time, attracted the high-class and intellectuals.
"It's a very letting-go experience," Matthews said. "I think kids do that now in rock concerts. Concerts are very sexual too, very opposite of school."
The 9-member cast include Mejia, Riley, Tabor, Uranker and five opera singers: Victor Liu (Astradamors, the spankee), Kimberly Switzer (Mescalina, the spanker), Jason Switzer (Nekrotzar, death and brother of Kimberly), Vincent Chambers (Piet-the-Pot) and Kristen Leh Reed (Venus).
The theater arts department's contribution to the show is costumes, set material and lighting.
"The costumes are incredible," Matthews said. "The husband is wearing a bra, panties and garter. One actress appears to be topless but she is wearing a fake top. There is no nudity but a nudity thing."
Drinks will be available from a no host bar on the patio from 7:15 to 8 p.m. The audience will then be seated in a recreated 1930s German beer house, complete with small tables and chairs
The show has been sold out for two weeks. Matthews and Riley said that with demand, a second show is a possibility.
Matthews and company have been working on the production for just over a month and are obviously pumped up about the upcoming performance.
Bounding from his chair and alternating between sleeking back his Fabio-like hair and embracing invisible props, Matthews exudes theatrical anticipation.