Interviews

Lance Roberts Wants You to Come to 54 Below’s Cadavaret

Lance Roberts
Lance Roberts
© David Gordon

What good is sitting alone in your room – especially if it’s October 31, and you’re dressed up like Charlie Chaplin, Elphaba, or The Green Goblin. Of course, you can join the millions of people crowding the streets of downtown New York after the annual Village Halloween Parade or try trick-or-treating in your apartment building, but Broadway star Lance Roberts has a better idea.

Roberts, last seen onstage as a ghost in Ghost and The King of Cartoons in The Pee-wee Herman Show on Broadway, has created Cadavaret, which will play at 11pm on Halloween at 54 Below. He will be joined by fellow Broadway favorites Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Robin De Jesus, Jen Noble, Jennifer Sanchez, Chester Gregory, Orville Mendoza – and perhaps a surprise guest or two.

“I love Halloween, but there’s never the kind of Halloween entertainment for Broadway people like me,” says Roberts, who will host the evening. “I didn’t want to do a standard cabaret act that night, so I invited a bunch of friends from other shows to join me. I hope this will become an annual celebration. Christmas has all these sophisticated, elegant shows – why shouldn’t Halloween?”

Roberts thinks that the club, which has become one of the city’s hottest nightspots since opening in June, is the ideal space for the show (and not just because it might be haunted by the spirits of former Studio 54 patrons). “54 Below seems like the perfect place to do this show, because like Halloween, it’s gorgeous and sexy,” he says.

Roberts doesn’t want to give away the show’s song list, but he says patrons can expect “cool” songs from some “dark musicals” including Little Shop of Horrors, Sweeney Todd, Kiss of the Spider Woman, and more.

And audiences will be hearing a little something from, you guessed it, The Rocky Horror Show. “I’m hoping the entire audience will end up doing the Time Warp with us!” he says. “This night is a chance for everyone – on stage and off – to be imaginative and go wild a little bit.”

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