Divas and the devious. Sad clowns and stuck-up captains. Silly servants and strict masters. Pratfalls and patter songs. Slapstick and just shtick. Being funny on stage is serious business and comedic characters date back centuries. Faction of Fools, the only DC-based theater company to produce solely commedia dell’arte, has been masking it up, pratfalling, and re-inventing Renaissance-era tropes since 2010.
This summer, at its home base in Southeast at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, the Devising Ensemble of Faction of Fools has tried a first for this troupe of physical comics: cabaret. But only as a commedia dell’arte troupe can do it. Leftover Lazzi: A Commedia Cabaret remixes classic cabaret by leaning into the Broadway songbook. Ranging from numbers as expected, of course, as “Wilkommen” from Cabaret, to songs collected from Damn Yankees, She Loves Me, Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, The Last Five Years, and the sleeper hit number of the evening, “Two Little Lines,” by Kasie and Drew Gasparini, the sung numbers span moods and decades.
The Italian term lazzi refers to the standard comic bits the actors developed in the 17th and 18th centuries, which serve as interludes to the storytelling while providing the audience with the opportunity to laugh. In this case, the program begins with comedic gags, the six actors wearing freeform abstract commedia dell’arte half masks designed by Tara Cariaso of Waxing Moon Masks. She’s steered away from the denigrating stereotypes these classic masks often alluded to by highlighting socioeconomic levels separating rich from poor, class levels separating servants from masters, and ageist, sexist, and racist tropes that no longer feel relevant in the 21st century.
The opening lazzi play out before a perspective-painted backdrop of a Renaissance-era Italian town square, featuring a central fountain courtyard, streets and alleys radiating off, and white stone-columned buildings one with pope-like sculpture (set designer Johnny Weissgerber). A scenario with a woman set to be betrothed to Il Capitano, but, of course, she’s in love with the less prestigious Luchina. He dictates, poorly, a love poem to his beloved, and confusion and chaos ensue. A magical spell is invoked to match the lovers to the right partners. The shift in William K. D’Eugenio’s lights signals the magical moment, while the backdrop falls to reveal a piano.
Enter the cabaret.
Thus, lazzi transforms to Broadway-style cabaret with simple panache. Seth Langer, bedecked in green sequins, announces himself, suitcase in hand, from a seat in the audience. Carrying the suitcase — a nod to the itinerant actors of the commedia dell’arte era — Langer shares bars from The Sound of Music: “the hills are alive …” and “Trouble” (Music Man) right here, not in River City, but in DC. Cut to a couple of lines from Mamma Mia along with requisite jazz hands, step ball changes, and, unsuprisingly, the trilingual invitation “Willkommen” with requisite (again) kick line follows. It is, after all, a cabaret.
Moments of whiplash-inducing switches of song-and-dance numbers mash together, as the stylized Broadway numbers take on greater length and depth following the freneticism of these opening moments. The cast — Natalie Cutcher, Natalia Fyfe, C.C. Gallagher, Jasmine Proctor, and Kathryn Zoerb, along with Langer — blend into a freely stylized set list of numbers that allow the strongest singers to show off a falsetto, a deep baritone, an 11 o’clock belt and tongue-twisting patter songs, like the smart and sharply sung “Funny,” by Cutcher, who can’t tell a joke to save her life in this bit of shtick, and Zoerb.
Fyfe renders “Two Little Lines,” a narrative ballad about a woman’s difficult choice, with heartfelt honesty, while Gallagher and Zoerb milk Sondheim’s farcical “Agony” with paradoxical sincerity. Then, Proctor’s 11 o’clock belt in “I Can Do Better Than That” was met with audience whoops.
Throughout, Cidney Forkpah’s costumes, starting with a black base layer for the ensemble, provide basic elements — a sash, skirt, scarf, tie — to contextualize the characters in the musical numbers. The only unmasked player, pianist Alan Naylor, accompanies the cast in the guise of Pierrot, the sad clown, his face painted white, his baleful expressions and frozen fingers, lugubrious frown drawing hearty laughs.
Director/choreographer Deimoni Brewington leaned into the stereotypical Broadway tropes hearkening back to the Renaissance-era stock characters, which remain recognizable and relevant today, as they have evolved across centuries through Shakespeare, Molière, British pantomime, Bertolt Brecht to today’s sitcoms and Simpsons. Brewington intends to knit together the tropes, patter, and characters of commedia dell’arte as it was reinvented on Broadway. Leftover Lazzi is a cabaret of a different ilk. The devisers, performers, and off-stage creatives have found ways to reimagine commedia tropes with a musical theater twist.
Running Time: One hour 40 minutes, with one 10-minute intermission.
Leftover Lazzi: A Commedia Cabaret plays through August 1, 2026, presented by Faction of Fools Theatre Company, performing in the black box theater inside the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop at 545 7th Street SE, Washington, DC. Tickets are on a sliding scale ($27, market rate; $37, “pay it forward”; $17, lower income/child) and can be purchased at the door and online.
Family-friendly, contains some PG-13 humor.
Leftover Lazzi: A Commedia Cabaret
By the Devising Ensemble of Faction of Fools
Directed by Deimoni Brewington
CAST
Natalie Cutcher
Natalia Fyfe
C.C. Gallagher
Seth Langer
Jasmine Proctor
Kathryn Zoerb
Alan Naylor, accompanist
