By Wendy Carson

Wednesday night, select members of the “American Idiot” cast got together at Theatre on the Square for an “Idiot Cabaret” concert. Even though most notice of the show was by Facebook invite or other theater insider word-of-mouth, the crowd was decently large and up for anything.

Taking the stage dressed in what would best be called “casual black” were Lydia Burke, Lisa Ermel, Olivia Huntley and Carly Kincannon, with castmates Spencer Curnutt and Matthew Lee. (“American Idiot” continues through July 5 at the Phoenix Theatre.)

The theme for the evening was “Songs of Angst,” with the first half of the set being popular songs that were meaningful to each performer during their school years and the second half being favorite songs of angst from Broadway.

While the radio hits were familiar, each singer chose their own arrangement, and while most were in stark contrast to the original, all of them were equally beautiful. Who would have thought that “Jaded” by Aerosmith would work perfectly as a torch song?

The whole show was spectacular, with each singer bringing their all — even the few technical glitches between the songs were entertaining. Everyone who missed this event really missed out on a unique and fantastic show.

For anyone out there who didn’t know about the cabaret show, John and I are doing our best to find out about these events as soon as possible and will be posting that information here, as well as the Facebook page, so you won’t miss another one.

Personally, I would really like to see more of these cabaret events happening. Hopefully, someone will step up and organize them into a monthly occurrence. Besides replacing the “Glee” withdrawal most of us are feeling, the opportunity to showcase many of our talented local actors in a more relaxed light would be very welcome. Especially our teen and young adult performers would get a chance to test their range and gain more experience. There is so much potential for some amazing shows, plus, the one-night-only scheduling should help to make the audiences more diverse yet still very supportive.