“Cotton Club,” director Kimberley Rampersad, ends Oct. 11.
“Footlights,” director Tim Carroll, ends Oct. 5.
“Kabarett,” director Tim Carroll, ends Oct. 12.
**** (out of 5)

Penny-Lynn Cookson
Special to The Lake Report

“It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing” and swing audiences certainly did when Duke Ellington composed this jazz classic with lyrics by Irving Mills in 1931 and performed it at Harlem’s famous Cotton Club. 

And 93 years later, we are still swinging, swaying and “doo wahing” to the beat of this joyful tune as the cast of “Cotton Club” pounds it out in song and dance during their closing number of a terrific upbeat evening in the Spiegeltent. 

The song list of each of three sets presents tunes of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s by Gershwin, Arlen, Cole Porter, the Duke and others.

They remain as beloved today as they were then — and how the Shaw cast delivered! 

Jeremiah Sparks not only sang “Ain’t Misbehavin” but accompanied himself at the keyboard as convincingly as ol’ Fats Waller himself.

Graeme Kitagawa played drums, sang and brilliantly tap danced up a storm and then switched to the plaintive “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Songs of smitten love, “My Man” and “I’m In the Mood for Love,” were superbly delivered by Élodie Gillett.

The audience was totally into enthusiastically singing the “hidy hidy ho” response of Cab Calloway’s fun “Minnie the Moocher.”  

And as if things couldn’t get higher, we had Tat Austrie singing “How High the Moon,” “Summertime” and “Stormy Weather” with a delivery that went from vibrant to tender to defiant. 

A sparkling Alana Bridgewater wowed us with an Ella-worthy “Just One of Those Things” and a rich dramatic “Strange Fruit.” Music director Paul Sportelli was solid throughout at the keyboard. 

“Footlights” gave us another stellar evening of musical hits from Tin Pan Alley and “The Golden Age of Broadway.” The two-set song selection was intriguing because each performer chose songs particularly meaningful to them. 

Gillett opened the show with “Something’s Coming” (from “West Side Story”) followed by “Don’t Rain on My Parade” (“Funny Girl”) and JJ Gerber’s wistful “Soon It’s Gonna Rain” (“The Fantasticks”) contrasted with a buoyant “Put On a Happy Face” (“Bye Bye Birdie”).

Bridgewater totally enticed us to fly with her anytime in dazzling renditions of Duke  Ellington’s “I’m Beginning to See the Light” and “Fly Me to the Moon,” the theme song of the Apollo 10 and 11 missions orbiting the moon.

Back on Earth, Kitagawa expressed near breakdown angst prior to a blind date in “Tonight at Eight” and Taurian Teelucksingh delivered tremulous uncertainty to full blown joy in “She Loves Me.”

Ruthie Knut’s deep emotion in “Till There Was You” and Tat Austrie’s “Love Me or Leave Me” convinced us that we are not going anywhere without these two.  

Shane Carty sang a strong heartfelt “The Impossible Dream (The Quest)” from “Man of La Mancha” and our dream was encore!  

Jeremiah Sparks gave us “All of Me” (“Carousel”) and a powerful “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” His mother and family from Nova Scotia were in a banquette giving full-throated support of Jeremiah and cast with expressions of “Right!”, “You tell ’em!” and “Go girl!” — which startled the meek and gave delight to the rest of us.

This was a great show and the audience response was all-in and exhilarating. 

“Kabarett” presents a night in Berlin with music composed and performed during the unstable but highly creative 1930s Weimar years to the Second World War. 

Kurt Weill’s “Mack the Knife” reveals the underbelly violence of the time. Compositions by Bertolt Brecht and Hans Eisler reflect war and political turmoil in “Song of the Moldau,” “Solidarity Song” and “Bilbao Song.”

Anti-capitalism cynically rings out in “It’s All a Swindle” and “There’s Nothing Quite Like Money.” 

The songs of longing, love and loss composed by Spoliansky, Holländer and others provided the other side of shattered lives during an uncertain present and unknown future.

The most popular song became “Lili Marlene,” a war-era German love poem written by Hans Leip and set to music by Norbert Schultze in 1938 and most memorably sung by Lale Andersen, Vera Lynn and ever after by Marlene Dietrich.

“Lili Marlene” was first heard as a Nazi propaganda song on Radio Belgrade. It was claimed by both the Allied Desert Rats and Rommel’s Afrika Korps battling it out in North Africa. 

Goebbels and the BBC tried to ban it without success. The troops loved it and it became internationally famous in no time. 

The final flourish by the excellent cast of Kristi Frank, Carty, Gerber, Nkut and Teelucksingh was appropriately “Cabaret” by Kander and Ebb, which brought a very satisfying production to a rousing nostalgic close. 

Other performances in the Spiegeltent are the “Variety Show,” which was more miss than hit, and “The Roll of Shaw,” which was an intolerable and interminable bore. 

The latter was an improvisation with the audience determining the next action by using paddles as in an auction house. One wished the hammer to come down swiftly.  

May the Spiegeltent live on at the Shaw with variety but more focus on well-directed hits, please.

Penny-Lynn Cookson is an arts and culture historian, writer and lecturer living in Niagara-on-the-Lake.