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Beate Hein Bennett
April 10 – 27, 2025
In these dark times of our own homegrown would-be “great dictator” and his collective of sycophants with increasingly repressive notions, the idea of “Café Resistance” would seem to be a timely theatrical entertainment, and it is. Roberto Monticello’s concoction is set in a Parisian low-class bordello on the eve of the German occupation in 1940, purportedly based on actual stories about the French Resistance which had its cells in many underground places, such as bordellos where the occupiers could regale themselves to sex and liquor. And where informants from both sides could operate and become (literally) strange bedfellows—with information traveling “under cover” of darkness. Defiance, resistance, subversion takes great courage in such times of living on the edge. The author has tested his own courage by spending time as a Red Cross volunteer and activist in Ukraine and Gaza, where he sustained life-threatening wounds, so he is familiar with living on the edge between courage and extinction. He has employed gallows humor to tell this historicized tale of bravery by a group of women who negotiate the space between courage and fear on the front-lines.
Director and co-writer Lissa Moira has assembled a large cast of actors who are also trained as dancers and musicians to bring to life the dark ambience of the Blue Parrot Cafe—a cage with a painted figure of a cabaret dancer is suspended above the stage space. (Set design by Litza Colon, lighting design by Marsh Shugart) Accompanying the entire performance is the pianist Tristan Cano as slightly dyspeptic Casimir who improvises and riffs on a mish-mash repertoire of classical 30s and 40s café music, sprinkled with classic Debussy, Ravel, de Falla, and songs from the American Songbook used as ironic counterpoint to the action. (Music direction by Peter Dizozza). Much of the times he is partnered by Susan Mitchell as the violin wielding prostitute Countess. The “Ladies of the Night” or les putains of the Blue Parrot Cafe are individualized characters: there is Marguerite, the avaricious imperious Madame of the establishment (Sandra Leclerq), who hires the mysterious shy Louise (Marlain Angelides) as cashier/manager; the rest of the chorus includes slick Satin Skin (Caitlin Zerra Rose); fiery mature flamenco dancer Castanet (Inma Heredia), pretty but cagey Mortadella (Francoise Traxler); a lusty rebellious Stuffed Pigeon (Samantha Mileski); the oddly named Haddock (Ren Ragsdale); and Robyn Belt in a double role as Flick, a cabaret entertainer at the Blue Parrot, and Anne, a countess who temporarily adopts the boy Jacques (played by the brothers Niko and Luka Zylik), the son of Louise who turns out to be Jewish. The women (except for Marguerite) ultimately come together as underground agents for the Resistance, some more willingly heroic than others, to help save Paris and France from the Nazi occupation and the collaborationist fascist forces.
The male characters are more cliché: Louise’s lover Dada (John McHatton), a handsome young Resistance hero; the dangerous double agent Groulin (Michael A. Green), an oily manipulator; an obtuse hedonistic German Nazi General (William Broderick), his obsequious Nazi soldiers, played by actors Zachary Harris Martin and Jack Farrell who are also double-cast in some other cameo roles; and the character Raoul (Matthew James Fitzgerald), a wine merchant who keeps popping up.
The idea to locate the story of the French Resistance in a Parisian bordello is quite plausible and full of theatrical possibilities. However, the author has tried to pack too many characters with too many incidences into a story spread over four years (1940-1945). France during that time was divided into two zones—the Nazi occupied zone and the collaborationist Vichy Government. The French Resistance movement was a complex web of underground activity with international connections. (Even Irish Samuel Beckett belonged to the cell ‘Gloria’, which was denounced by a priest—but that’s another story.)
The play would have been served better with fewer and better developed characters and fewer but more compelling scenes. Fewer choice pieces of scenery would mean less awkward in and out shifting of furniture that would have cut performance time. A cabaret style play with farcical and dramatic elements is best served in ninety minutes straight without intermission. Even so, I think that “Café Resistance” is a timely reminder of life in war times and under dictatorship, and how much individual courage it takes not to give in. On a metaphorical level, the play also demonstrates that corruption is not where “the moral majority” might think it exists but that the “bordello” can be established in the very centers of power where prostitution becomes the name of the game.
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