Cabaret is one of the most intimate art forms. The best artists create a sense of connection with the audience, breaking down walls through song, dance and storytelling—and every Tuesday and Thursday through July (except for the week before the Fourth of July), top cabaret performers are taking the stage at the CVRep Playhouse in Cathedral City.
“You can go to Wikipedia or Google and learn all about these artists, but you won’t know the things you’ll learn by attending the cabaret,” said Adam Karsten, Coachella Valley Repertory’s executive artistic director. “They share their most intimate moments of their lives and careers by talking directly to the audience.”
But no one does it better than Robert Yacko, performing on Tuesday, July 7, as part of the Summer Cabaret Series. The versatile actor, dancer, director, musician and singer made his Broadway debut in Fiddler on the Roof, directed by Jerome Robbins, and has since starred in the Los Angeles premiere of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George, and the West Coast premieres of Legacy of Light and Romance, Romance.
During a recent interview, Yacko said the desert audience is one of his favorites.
“The theater community is so rich,” he said. “They know theater; they know their history and are a very well-educated theater audience. They are the best, and the main joy of coming down there.”
Yacko’s inspiration to sing came from his Irish-American grandfather.
“He was a former Navy man with a shock of white hair, who chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes and had a big anchor tattoo on his left forearm—a manly-man who loved to sing with a beautiful Irish voice that mesmerized us,” Yacko said. “We would go on (my grandfather’s) boat, and after dinner, he would play the piano by ear, sing to his kids, and get lost in the music. The combination of those things inspired me. He wasn’t doing it to entertain us; he loved to sing all of his favorite Irish songs, getting lost in the poetry and music. I do it for the love of it. It’s the way the Irish express their emotions.”
Yacko was born in Philadelphia. He and his seven siblings were raised by their Irish-American mother and Hungarian-American father in a rough suburb of Montgomery County.
“It’s the kind of place where if you’re out alone at night, you’d better know how to take care of yourself,” he said. “Later, when I moved to Manhattan, it was a piece of cake after living there.”
At first, he tried to dismiss where he grew up, but later realized it gave him strength.
“I tapped into it,” he said. “It was still part of me and helped me visit those dark places when I was onstage.”
In high school, while performing in South Pacific—his first musical—he had an epiphany, he said.
“Something happened during the applause,” Yacko said. “I was the tall kid standing in the back of the stage when I literally heard a word in the back of my head that said, ‘Home.’ I didn’t even know where it came from, but knew this is what I wanted to do.”
He went to Temple University, and then The Juilliard School. His career took off from there—but it wasn’t always easy.
“You have to have faith in your own value and evolve,” he said. “You might have success as a leading man, and then you’ll grow out of it—and you must be willing to change, and be honest with yourself about who you are now. … My training and a teacher who recognized something in me—saying that I was a character and a leading actor, versatile—opened my eyes that I could work forever. (I could) step out of being a leading man and take on a challenge of playing some not-pleasant and even ugly people … like playing George (in Sunday in the Park With George), who was not always kind. We are all flawed and must be willing to go there.”
That role was a life-changer as well as a career-changer. So, too, was playing Perchik in the Broadway revival of Fiddler on the Roof. After three tours over a period of four years, followed by regional productions for 10 years, Yacko realized he was too old to keep playing the character—so he stopped.
“I evolved, which helped me find new paths,” he said. “It’s not easy. There are doubts, but you have to believe in your own gifts and find new ways to create, which is what led me to cabaret. The more you can do it, the easier it will be to navigate and trust that you can get through the ‘I don’t know if I’m good enough anymore’ (phase). We all go through it.”
In 1993, he was playing the lead in Maury Yeston’s Phantom—which led to another key life moment.
”A rope broke when I was swinging, and I fell about 16 feet to a hard stage floor,” Yacko said. “Afterward, I struggled, thinking, ‘Maybe I can’t do this anymore. Maybe I should go into healing work.’”
Then he had another epiphany. Yacko was reading a book called Coyote Medicine: Lessons From Native American Healing, where he found a quote about healing ceremonies that used music and storytelling.
He went right back to performing.
“We use songs and music to move people to get out of their stuck lives, to feel again,” he said. “… I hope I can help people feel more human.”
Robert Yacko will perform at 7 p.m., Tuesday, July 7, at the CVRep Playhouse, at 68510 Palm Canyon Drive, in Cathedral City, as part of the Summer Cabaret Series. Tickets area $65. Other shows take place on Tuesdays and Thursdays (with the exception of June 30 and July 2) through July 30. For tickets and more information, visit www.cvrep.org.
