While at one time Columbia may have been satisfied with just PrezBo and MiMoo, there’s now another administrative pet name to be tossed around campus like a frisbee: Ke$ho.
The 117th annual Varsity Show “Another Scandal!” put its satirical spotlight on the high-profile controversies, both real and imagined, that shook campus this year. Its cast and crew put together a show that, in one fell swoop, spoofed the drug bust (real), ROTC town halls (real), professor incest case (sadly, real), and Dean Kevin Shollenberger’s secret double life moonlighting as pop star Ke$ho (sadly, not real).
The production, which was staged Friday, April 29, through Sunday, May 1 in Roone Arledge Auditorium, showcased its writers’ skill with one-liners as well as a number of impressive vocal and comedic performances by the cast. “Another Scandal!” succeeded in giving attendees what they came for: a night of laughing at and reveling in Columbia’s idiosyncrasies.
The main plot followed University Senator Preston (Isaac Assor, CC ’14), in his courtship of Julia (Naomi Roochnik, BC ’13), an activist ADP member with an underground Four Loko brewery.
Meanwhile, Barnard first-year Jesse (Chris Silverberg, CC ’13) struggled to hide his identity as a strong, beautiful Barnard man.
Hot on the pursuit of exposing all of the skeletons in Columbia’s closet was undercover cop Chaz (Andrew Wright, CC ’14). Chaz’s goonish, mustachioed boss (Bob Vulfov, CC ’13), addressed exclusively as “The Chief,” checked in on him periodically, displaying a penchant for gloriously tacky shirts and showcasing Vulfov’s knack for classic physical comedy.
As the show’s romantic leads, Assor and Roochnik contributed both vocal chops and charisma, although Assor arguably had the funnier material to work with and offered a more immediately compelling performance. His robotic chorus of “I am into that,” uttered each time his character fell for Julia just a little bit harder, sent peals of laughter through the audience.
Ensemble actors often had their own scene-stealing moments, most notably Sam Mickel, CC ’14, as an overzealous member of Conversio Virium and Rachel Chavez, CC ’14, as a Sabor dancer with a love of puns on her club’s name, expressed during her references to “Sa-bondage” and to the head of the Hispanic studies department, her “Sa-biological father.”
Despite this varied and entertaining array of personalities, some characters in “Another Scandal!” lacked depth and failed to connect to the audience. Rebekah Lowin, CC ’14, gave a stellar vocal performance in “Campus Character,” but her character Nora, Preston’s fame-seeking little sister, seemed hastily sketched, with a slightly juvenile blog-obsessed persona and few redeeming qualities. Julia, too, flattened as the show progressed, losing much of her initial sass in favor of a tame do-gooder spirit to facilitate plot resolution.
But, while some characters lacked color, the show mostly made up for it with its subplot centering on Dean Shollenberger (Sean Walsh, CC ’14), who, according to the show, played Dean of Student Affairs by day and hygienically-questionable international singing sensation by night. Ke$ho’s jokes and Walsh’s delivery were stand-outs even among the show’s barrage of explosive one-liners. The audience roared when Ke$ho sentenced Julia to the worst punishment his office could give: probation from student council, RA, and athletic events.
Other noteworthy jokes highlighted ubiquitous but often overlooked aspects of Morningside life—a tried and true Varsity Show tactic. For one, when Preston began to doubt how well he really knew Julia, he expressed his disappointment with a metaphor all too familiar to Columbians: “It was all a façade, like Tom’s!” Another stand-out quip at last pinpointed the pungent, inescapable odor of Butler 409: kimchi.
Where writers Betsy Morais, CC ’11 and former Spectator city news editor, and Nuriel Moghavem, CC ’11 and former Spectator columnist, most succeeded in comparison to previous Varsity Show writers was in the way they tailored the show to Columbia at present. They not only created a coherent plot structure, but appropriated salient aspects of campus culture from this year in particular rather than dealing in vague generalities about Columbia, its students, and its problems. Notably absent was the typical Varsity Show joke about the sexual promiscuity of Barnard students.
The show’s best songs, too, broke from traditional musical theater paradigms and styles used in Varsity Shows past. Ke$ho’s number “Bust This Club!,” a rousing techno anthem accompanied by flashing lights and gyrating dancers, was one of the show’s more unexpected, and memorable, moments. And while the song “Man Date” explored some bromantic cliches, the saucy Caribbean-inspired beat was a welcome departure from the show’s perkier tunes, and Assor, Wright, and Silverberg sold the lyrics with faux-intoxication and charm.
The sets, including a skillful replica of the bar at The Heights, proved to be the production’s most impressive technical aspect. The models of dorm rooms—one for Chaz and Preston plastered with Justin Bieber posters and American flags and a Barnard suite with a startlingly authentic-looking bulletin board—were also spot-on.
For a production about scandals, “Another Scandal!” could have been sharper and more scandalous, but it still delivered the Varsity Show spirit students keep coming back for—one that’s lighthearted, silly, and buoyant—or, rather, Sa-buoyant.
Jim Pagels, Claire Stern, Finn Vigeland, and Helen Werbe contributed to this article.
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