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It’s a “Crime (Cabaret)” What Wilson Weinberg & Kolczynski Do!
by Bruce-Michael Gelbert     |      Bookmark and Share
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photo by Bruce-Michael Gelbert
Tom Wilson Weinberg & Melissa Kolczynski
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Philadelphia cabaret duo Tom Wilson Weinberg, composer, pianist and singer, and Melissa Kolczynski, singer, and ukulele and piano player, brought their “Cabaret Crime,” a show, at once entertaining and political, consisting of songs not only about actual crime, but also about activity historically labeled crime with little justification, to the Community House, under the aegis of the Arts Project of Cherry Grove (APCG), on June 18.

With Weinberg at the piano, Kolczynski began with a contemplative, then swinging account of “Miss Otis Regrets,” a story of murder and passion, ending with a triumphant high note. “An old veteran reminisces,” Weinberg said, introducing his song, “Give me the military life,” a response to the crime that is Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, replete with riotous double entendres. “While I’m on the road/I’ll break the penal code,” they sang, examining a patchwork quilt of laws against gay sex, as they toured the states. From Weinberg’s musical “The Teachings of Chairman Rick”—successfully used against blatantly homophobic former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum in his last and, happily, unsuccessful campaign, by quoting him verbatim—came a song that began, “I have a problem with homosexuals.”

We heard from the charming criminals created by Damon Runyon, as musicked by Frank Loesser in “Guys and Dolls, when our duo sang “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat,” and Kolczynski, breaking out her best New Yawkese, offered “Adelaide’s Lament,” a tour de force.

Kolczynski solemnly read those grisly little lines from the Book of Leviticus, which have been wielded against us, inspiring Weinberg’s witty answer, “Man shall lie with man, if they want to/woman shall lie with woman, if they want to/ … that’s my Leviticus,” with our artists ending by chanting “A-people” in lieu of “Amen.”

Kolczynski sang sentimentally of “The Old Dope Peddler (spreading joy wherever he goes),” in Tom Lehrer’s louche song, and offered an impassioned “Masochism Tango.” She nimbly negotiated the rapid-fire and, here, gender-bending tongue twisters of a Jacques Brel number (“If I could be for only an hour … cute, cute, cute in a stupid ass way!”) Weinberg probed what he called ‘the laws of the family,’ using “The Love that Dare not Speak Its Name” to refer to thumb sucking, groping oneself, and getting erections, as well as its standard meaning, with Kolczynski accompanying him on ukulele, as he gave us a bit of kazoo and a bit of soft shoe. Kolczynski was at the keyboard as she sang a Laura Nyro piece about “getting off the poverty train” (“Baby, I just saw the devil and he’s smiling at me”), which she described as a “late ’60s drug song.” Our duo embarked on a medley of Weinberg’s “Big Spender,” from Cy Coleman’s “Sweet Charity;” Kolczynski’s “Love for Sale,” by Cole Porter; the two harmonizing on “Private Dancer,” the Tina Turner song; and Weinberg’s “Ten Cents a Dance,” by Rodgers and Hart, adapted to include some references to APCG. They told a “Fried Green Tomatoes”-type tale of the revenge of battered spouse Wanda, assisted by best girlfriend MaryAnn, against abusive Earl, with a refrain of “Earl had to die.”

“I’d like to be a lesbian, ’cause lesbians are so cool,” Weinberg yearned, with “If I were a gay man, I’d be an aesthete,” as Kolczynski’s rejoinder, demonstrating that we can indeed laugh at ourselves. In a medley of songs from Weinberg’s musical “Bruhs and Gean,” following a historic New York gay couple through six decades of their relationship, they sang of the romance of the men dancing together at home, because they couldn’t do so in public (“It’s always Fred and Ginger/It’s always Ginger and Fred”); and expressed nostalgia for the twilight world of the past (“Life was better in the closet”); but, with drive, saluted the “Stonewall,” the birthplace of gay rebellion.

With same-sex marriage in the air, Weinberg and Kolczynski sang a rousing “Old Fashioned Wedding,” by Irving Berlin, from “Annie Get Your Gun,” and “We’re just we” (“No matrimony, no ceremony”), and Kolczynski vented about a murderous match, declaring, “Everything I’ve got belongs to you,” for better or worse, mostly worse. Weinberg rapped about a “Safe-Sex Slut”—not at all a contradiction—who wants all comers—safely, and Kolczynski limned a high-calorie love in Kander and Ebb’s ode to “Sara Lee.” They looked at the City of Light and clichés about it, in “Another Song about Paris,” and for an encore, celebrated being “Two Lost Souls (on the highway of life).”





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