Bregamos Community Theater | Culture & Community | Fair Haven | Arts & Culture | Musical Theater
Lenny Adams. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Lenny Adams walked into a pool of light, and found the moment he'd been waiting for. He closed his eyes, and imagined singing to the people he’d lost over the years. His soaring vocals filled the room. Suddenly, it was not Bregamos Community Theater at all, but a church filled with his grief, raw and unfiltered. Oh lo-o-o-ver! I’ll cover you! he belted.
Adams is a new member of the Round Table Players, a rag-tag band of self-described misfits based in New Haven, West Haven, and Branford that can make rafter-raising sound, dip into crusty 1920s humor, and just as quickly quote Broadway chapter and verse. This Saturday and Sunday, they will perform “Miscast Cabaret,” a performance and fundraiser for the group at Bregamos Community Theater. The theater is nestled at the base of a driveway at 491 Blatchley Ave.
The show encourages actors to choose and perform pieces they would not otherwise be cast to play. In the process, it gives the audience new eyes—and ears—with which to take on the music. Selections range from Chicago, Man of La Mancha and Little Shop of Horrors to Once On This Island, Ragtime, Tangled, The Wiz and Between the Lines.
“It’s something we’d been kind of kicking around for a while,” said Anthony Festa, who founded the group in 2011. “Like, wouldn’t it be funny to sing these songs if the roles were reversed? The whole idea was to do songs that you hear, and immediately you sing.”
Top: Diane Raikis (Festa and Laura Melillo are in the background) performing in "Easy Street" from Annie. Bottom: Mase and Glynn. Lucy Gellman Photos.
The performance is a triumphant return to the stage for the group, which includes public school teachers, counselors, retirees, hospital employees, at least one devoted dog mom, and trained professional singers. Prior to 2020, Round Table had become known for doing large ensemble shows in small, unconventional spaces, turning out performances of Ragtime, Fiddler on the Roof, Into The Woods, A Christmas Carol, and Nunsense among others.
Some actors who joined as kids are in high school and college now; others have returned to the group after years away. For years, the players used the First Congregational Church in Branford as their home base, paying for the rights with what little funding they were able to scrounge up. After parting ways with the church, “we started thinking about rental costs,” said Rob Esposito, a theater teacher at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School. It pushed Round Table to think about its next chapter.
By March 2020, the group had secured its 501c3 nonprofit status, and was planning “a big welcome back cabaret,” Festa said. Then Covid-19 arrived in Connecticut. Originally, Festa moved the performance back a few months, and assumed everything would be normal by the fall. Instead, it turned into a years-long, unexpected intermission. Aside from a small, scaled-back cabaret last year, the company has been largely quiet for the past two and a half years.
Festa: "It's always kind of been our goal to give the outcasts a chance." Lucy Gellman Photos.
Festa said he’s ready—and excited—to come back.
It’s a fun way to re-engage with theater writ large, he added. While Broadway is not completely doctrinaire in its casting, the institution of theater is still racist, sexist, ageist, and fatphobic. Over 26 songs, 12 performers challenge sex and gender norms, make the audience turn age into a construct, get to hear West Side Story, The Wiz, Chicago and Suddenly Seymour with new ears.
“I think about the resonance [of that concept] in this space,” said Esposito, looking around at the sanctuary Rafael Ramos has built in Bregamos. “It's odd and different just like theater. And together, we create a community.”
During a rehearsal Tuesday night, it meant that dozens of stories filled the stage one by one, lifted to the rafters and sometimes flipped on their heads. Looking out onto the audience early in the evening, Diane Raikis performed a take on the Chicago-made hit “Mr. Cellophane” that became an incisive, biting commentary on how invisible women can be (the role was originated by Barney Martin and has always been played by a white man).
Getting up from a table beside her, James Mase fitted a teal feather boa around his neck, and strutted out to the first notes of “Good to Mama.” As a backing track crested beneath him, he shimmied and strutted across the stage, making it his own. As he sang, his work as a special education teacher melted away, and he was transported to 1920s Chicago, transformed into a bearded, fire-eyed version of Bob Fosse’s Matron “Mama” Morton.
Lucy Gellman Photos.
He flicked the boa toward fellow actor Meghan Glynn—who is his partner in real life—and laughter went rippling through the theater. Behind him, Bregamos founder Rafael Ramos watched the whole scene with wide, twinkling eyes and a delighted half-smile.
For Mase, musical theater “was love at first sight,” he later said. Mase has been performing since he was in kindergarten at Nathan Hale School, and his mother put him into a talent show to sing Judy Garland. From that moment, he kept singing whenever the opportunity presented itself. He said he’s grateful to be back onstage, where he’s also singing “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from Grease and jumping into a few duets.
“I am always singing,” added Glynn, who turned West Side Story’s “Maria” into an ethereal prayer. Normally, she said, she wouldn’t have the chance to play Tony, because he is always cast as male. After years of singing—Glynn grew up singing in church cabarets with her parents and siblings, and then went to the Hartt School to study music—she’s glad to be back.
She’s returned with friends in tow: she and Adams have known each other since nursery school.
Rob Esposito and Adams. Lucy Gellman Photos.
Inside the theater, he floated across the floor, gripping a pole as he dipped into “The Origin of Love,” and pulled out a soulful, resonant version that felt more Hedwig than Hedwig and the Angry Inch itself. Just minutes before, he had taken the stage to the reprise of “I’ll Cover You,” pulled from the musical RENT. A school counselor and licensed professional counselor by day, he’s wanted to sing the song for years, but never found a venue that will let him do it.
As a baritone who has high praise for the lower register (and choice words for tenors), he’s loved the song since the first time he heard it, he said. In the musical, the character Tom Collins (originated by Jesse L. Martin on Broadway; sung on tour by New Haven’s own Chuckey Brown) sings it at the funeral of his lover Angel. Several years ago, he tried out for the role, which normally goes to a trim Black actor.
“I was told ‘you don’t look right for the role,’ which is code for ‘You’re fat,’” he recalled.
It’s more than that, he added: his understanding of RENT is now much deeper than it was when he first heard the soundtrack in middle or high school. At first, “it didn’t mean anything,” he recalled. “Then you see the play and you’re like, ‘Oh my god.’”
When he performs it now, he thinks about the people he’s lost and the world has lost—to suicide, to HIV/AIDS, to Covid-19, to other causes, he said. After high school, Adams served in the army for 20 years, and taught for 12 before becoming a mental health professional (“It’s a lot of life in 39 years!” he said with a laugh). During that time, he also got married, then divorced, then came out. He and his husband have now been happily married for five years.
“I love that when I get to come here, the rest of my life gets put aside,” he said. “I think it’s nice that you get to play that part that you’ll never get to play.”
Heather Bazinet (at left) and Sara Messore.
He’s not the only new voice in the group: Heather Bazinet, a veteran educator in the New Haven Public Schools system, also joined Round Table after spotting a post about the fundraiser on Facebook. A drama director and speech pathologist at Wilbur Cross High School, Bazinet grew up singing—but has dedicated most of her recent energy into young people who have musical theater dreams of their own. This weekend, she stops back into the spotlight.
Among the works that she’ll be performing is RENT’s “What You Own,” normally reserved for two male actors. She is also singing Big Fish’s “Fight the Dragons” and “Grow For Me” from Little Shop of Horrors.
As the night wound down, Sara Messore approached the stage, a seafoam-blue medical mask pulled over her face. Performing “Something to Hold On To” from Between the Lines, Messore stepped into a sheaf of blue light, extended her arms, and began to sing.
Her voice, clear as a bell, coasted over the empty chairs and murals dotting the space; it wrapped around Festa and Esposto as they studied her backing track at a table. After sitting quietly in the back of the theater, she was finally exactly where she needed to be.
“I’ve always gravitated toward male songs,” said Messore, a now-23-year-old alto who has been performing with Round Table for a decade. “I think there are a lot of songs that you can fit well with that otherwise you would never be able to perform.”
“They’re just a group that you feel comfortable with immediately,” Messore added. “Even if you’ve only met them once, they welcome you like they’ve known you your entire life. With musical theater, you’re able to tell really important stories.”
The Round Table Players Miscast Cabaret is scheduled for Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. and Oct. 16 at 2 p.m. at Bregamos Community Theater, 491 Blatchley Avenue. Suggested donation is $15. Learn more about the group here.