By Bart Greenberg***Note to playwrights: When a sadistic Nazi General is menacing a brave French whore with ties to the underground accusing her of “sinking into melodrama,” it is difficult for the audience to control their giggles.
Cafe Resistance by Roberto Monticella and Lissa Moira, who also directs, is truly and singularly a melodrama in the true definition of the word: a story of heightened emotions with characters who are more archetypes than humans, interrupted with musical numbers if not a straight play. Cafe Resistance is a very long play (approximately 2 ½ hours including intermission) that felt even longer given its fragmentary storytelling and multiple pointless plot lines. The large stack of anachronisms, wanting performances and cribbed plot points lifted from more effective shows and movies (letters of transit with no names filled in: really?) added up to a soggy show. One longed for Charles Busch to sweep in and transform the presentation into one of his grand tongue-in-cheek salutes to genre movies.
Most of the action takes place in The Blue Parrot Cafe (not the one owned by Sidney Greenstreet in Casablanca) in Paris during the German Occupation. Curiously, no one ever refers to it as a cafe, but only as a cabaret. Of course, what it really is, is a brothel where the “girls” occasionally sing a song. Into the establishment comes Louise, a woman with a past and a whole lot of secrets, 
played by Marlain Angelides, giving an adequate performance, hampered by a long blond wig that makes her unnervingly resemble Lisa Kudrow on “Friends,” including that she is Jewish and that she has a child hidden away in the country.
Louise is hired hired by the owner as a cashier, but quickly becomes the manager when her employer Marguerite (Sandra Leclerq)—with a ghastly long red wig and an accent so thick that it might have given Lillian Montevecchi pause, rendering 95% of her shouted dialogue incomprehensible—chooses to head South, away from the Nazis. Other plot points include lots of infighting among the hookers (adding up to nothing dramatic), a reunion with a hunky French prisoner of war (Jon McHatton) who evidently took full advantage of the gym and the contemporary tattoo parlor at the P.O.W. camp), and a smarmy Parisian policeman/collaborator (Michael A. Green), who gave the best performance in the production, almost making the character believable).
The production is filled with music—most of it weird at best, often historically incorrect, and delivered with variable talent. The show began with an overture performed by Tristan Cano (piano) and Susan Mitchell (violin), which was the most atmospheric moment in the show. Cano also played the cynical whorehouse pianist, a kind of French Oscar Levant. Mitchell is called, for unexplained reasons, the Countess, and seemed to be a faded fallen flower addicted to cocaine. Their relationship was never explained. This problem is soon forgotten when the occupants of the cafe/cabaret/bordello come out in semi-Bob Fosse style choreography (by Taryn Lunch) to sing the on-point Cole Porter tune, “Love for Sale,” for absolutely no reason.
Also heard was “Lilli Marlene”—several times, even though it was banned by the Nazis. Caitlin Zerra Rose (as sweet Satin Skin) and Donovan Counts (as a young Nazi with far too much hair on his head) dance an Astaire/Rogers routine—well enough, but the number is just strange. And as the play/musical continues it will get stranger. Our heroine and her studly underground freedom fighter share a post-coitus duet of “Dream a Little Dream of Me” (Fabian Andre, William Schwandt and Gus Kahn) because why wouldn’t they sing an obscure American 
tune rather than a French love song? And then the same heroine and the afore-mentioned evil Nazi general sing “Falling in Love Again” (Frederich Hollaender, Sammy Lerner) despite the film it appeared in, the star, and the composer all being considered enemies of the Nazi State. One more moment of note: a calypso routine performed by Inma Heredia as Castanet, draped in bright orange, mantilla and, yes, castanets. The number has nothing to do with anything, but Heredia is one of the few performers who truly took the stage and filled it with energy.
Cafe Resistance has much going on: a very large cast, a lot of music, a lot of drama… plus lots of costumes, a cute kid, religion and villians. It’s a shame that the production adds up to so little. Paging Charles Busch.
Cafe Residence plays at Theater for the New City, 155 1st Avenue, NYC. Tickets can be purchased via www.theaterforthenewcity.net. It runs through April 27, 2025.
Photos by Jonathan Slaff
