Cabaret Vérité is back with “Laugh and Resist,” the fifth in Tom Wilson Weinberg’s series in which local performers fight the power through politically charged songs, skits and humor. The latest incarnation will run June 3-4 at William Way LGBT Community Center.
Weinberg, Cabaret Vérité’s guiding force, said that for the latest edition of the series, the performers are taking on the bright orange elephant in the room that is America.
“We always merge politics with — we hope — good humor and fun, and get people thinking,” he said. “Two shows ago was during the pope’s visit. We invited the pope. We had a seat for him. He didn’t attend; he was busy otherwise. The next one was just before the election in late October. We took on the system. It wasn’t a show to promote Hillary’s candidacy but anybody could tell we were hoping she would be the president. This show is about the mess that has been made in Washington these first four months. We poke fun at this administration. Trump has been satirized so much that we’re not going to try to go right there where one can see it on television every night. But we are certainly angry and upset and confused by this presidency. We’ll zing it with music and sketches.”
Given the copious amount of gaffes, scandals and indiscretions this administration is generating at a daily — if not hourly — clip, as well as the number of professional comedians and satirists commenting on them, it’s getting increasingly difficult to find an angle to the socio-political chaos that hasn’t be commented on to death.
But Weinberg said that the good people of Cabaret Vérité are up to the challenge.
“I have a terrific group working with me this time around,” he said. “Everybody has brought their own ideas to the table. I’m pretty excited about some of the things that people have suggested. A lot of the material is my own. Half the songs are mine. So the cast sings some of my material but they also bring their own ideas to the show. We set the songs up on a few occasions with quotes from that guy in the Oval Office or his leading henchmen, and then we respond in song. We do impersonate a few people and we pick things from the repertoire to comment on about the issues like the wall and his horrible xenophobia. We take on all those issues but we come at it from our point of view.”
We asked Weinberg what he thinks the world will look like for a sixth installment of Cabaret Vérité.
While he isn’t thinking that far ahead, he does have a political figure on whom he’d love to focus the group’s talents.
“What would be next? I was thinking about focusing on [Sen. Pat] Toomey. I did a show about Rick Santorum a few years ago. We had a bunch of performances and then we revived it six months later. I could see doing something like that with Toomey, but he’s not quite as colorful as Santorum was. But he’s in my sights at the moment.”
“Cabaret Vérité V: Laugh and Resist” will be held 8 p.m. June 3 and 2 p.m. June 4 at 1315 Spruce St. For more information or tickets, visit www.cabaretverite.brownpapertickets.com or www.tomwilsonweinberg.com.