The thing about songwriting is that you can’t have just one catchy line. You have to tell a story and get at that truth. Enter Cynthia Kaplin, her three-man band— all named Mike— and her Cock Show, which is a metaphor. And also not a metaphor. Buckle up, kids, this one is something else! Directed by Dani Davis, this one-woman, one-hour clusterbang of chaos is quirk and off-color whilst being a little entertaining, and a whole lot of in your face politically. Written and performed by Kaplin, with her aforementioned band and backing vocalists (Michael Hunter, Mike Rosengarten, Mike Lunoe— yes, they’re all actually called Mike…Hunter on keys, Rosengarten on bass, Lunoe on drums) you’ll get a fierce dose of feminism, albeit in a full-on echo-chamber, and some really humorous lyrics interwoven into a neat history lesson.
Being held hostage for the talk-back aside (its unclear whether Kaplin is doing this at each of her performances or just the one I attended— and if you want people to absorb and process what it is you just showed them, told them, sung at them for an hour, they need a few minutes to process, ingest, absorb, and think about before you can expect them to want to actively participate in something as cerebrally switched-on as a talk-back) the show is definitely an experience. The salty adult language that peppers its way into Kaplin’s lyrics— immediately as she promises not to use the ‘C’ word— warrants a cautionary advisory for anyone under a certain age but the message she’s spinning into these songs is a powerful one, even if you aren’t on her side of the political dividing lines.
Kaplin’s sharp sense of satire and clever integrations of hot-button topics, all culminating in a campaign for Joe Biden’s re-election (and honestly, her one-hour show is a lot more impressive that most of what’s out there in support for the presidential incumbent) makes for an intriguing, if not a thought-provoking evening. There were some sound balancing issues in the space, (Sound Design- Justin Brown) largely that Kaplin’s mic seemed to be up and hot about as high as it would go but the band, when they would join her, were always louder, drowning out or washing away some of her clever lyrics. When she’d sing acoustic and when she would speak, you could hear and understand her just fine, but as nearly all the songs— roughly half the show— had the band accompanying her singing— a lot of the nuance in the verses and bridges were lost.
With a vigorous energy, Kaplin hardly ever sits still the whole 60 minutes of the performance. She sings, she tells stories, she dances all around, she plays guitar. It’s fascinating to watch her flitting about as she pulls these juicy little tidbits of history into her narrative. You learn things like the ‘origin of the Old Wives Tale’ phrasing— men have essentially been calling women liars since 300 B.C. Kaplin also adds rich bits of humor, that backhandedly point out societal issues into her stories— like saying that God wanted to go to Yale but that had a 5% cap on Jewish admissions so he ended up at his safety school, Notre Dame. The show is liberally sprinkled with metaphors that are also not metaphors all throughout.
Stylistically her musical numbers are very similar to one another. It’s a slow-core rocker style, with some tempo variations, and slight emotional shifts. And there are definitely moments when Kaplin lets her band fellas shine— solos for Mike Lunoe on drums during the song about the Donner Party…yes there’s a song about The Donner Party…just like there’s a song about Hitler. Sort of. It’s really more about broad-sweeping Nazis. And Michael Hunter shows off with one hand playing the upright piano while the other plays his Roland VR-09 during the Migraine song, which is also where Mike Rosengarten gets his string solo. While Kaplin spends a good deal of time bashing the patriarchy and putting down men in her show, it’s clear that she approves of these three men and respects them with reverence.
Cynthia Kaplin is an animated story teller and while the stories that she’s amassed for this particular show don’t always quite seem to fit together nicely— I’m still wondering why we had to hear a whole non sequitur ballad about her dog who ate an avocado pit as her ‘health care is crap’ dig— they do share the overarching feminist viewpoints that women are screwed and are continually being screwed by old, white Christian men. One of the most powerful lines she delivers, near the end of the hour-long show is this:
“No one is going to save us from us but us.”
And while it’s definitely meant as a resounding, “Go vote for Joe Biden, do not put a write-in candidate, do not stay home and fail to vote”, there is something deeper there— perhaps the non-metaphor part of her Cock show that she’s working on. Kaplin is a solid singer, some of her songs are funny, albeit irreverent and possibly offensive to those with more sensitive ears and mentalities, and ultimately it’s an hour of echo-chamber entertainment. (Nobody who actually needs to hear these messages are ever the ones that comes out to these sorts of shows, which is the larger problem with— as Kaplin calls it, “political theatre”— in the first place.) She does an excellent job of answering all the questions posed on her marketing tableau— except she never actually answers “Why are there no Jews in Whoville?” Maybe that will get addressed in the sequel.
Running Time: Approximately 60 minutes with no intermission
Cindy of Arc plays through May 4th 2024 at Baltimore Theatre Project located at— 45 W. Preston Street in Baltimore, MD. Tickets are available by calling the box office at 410-752-8558 or by purchasing them in advance online.
To check out the ever-rotating schedule of live entertainment at Baltimore Theatre Project, click here.
