The Fremonts Share TMI, Delightfully, In “The Failure Cabaret”
The Fremonts, a husband-and-wife duo now appearing at the Apple Tree Inn in Lenox, describe their cabaret show, "The Failure Cabaret," as “one part music, one part comedy special, with dash of comedy snark.” I’d like to add another part: heart. For the months of October and November, they’ve been oversharing in song and story on Friday nights at the inn’s Bellflower Restaurant and Terrace. Not only have Stephanie Dodd and Justin Badger been airing their “failures,” they’ve been stealing hearts, too. How can they not, when the two engaging actor/musicians present, with devastating honesty and stellar comedic timing the circumstances that brought them to this time and place? (To be geographically specific, Great Barrington, where they now live.)
“'The Failure Cabaret' is about the giant mistakes we’ve made getting to this point,” says Badger, who wrote the Americana/fok-tinged music for the show. “These are all personal stories — comedic, but we go into the sadness and despair of our lives together.” They tick off their failures (“Failure number one: Getting married for all the wrong reasons”) and deliver monologues along with their brand of wistful story-telling tunes. With Badger on guitar and Dodd on accordion, they engage in repartee and winsome harmonies to tell their tale of how they meet, marry, manage (or not) their acting careers in New York, move from east to west to east again, deal with mental health issues —and maintain their marriage throughout all of it.
Badger (from Fremont, California) and Dodd (from Fremont, Nebraska, hence the duo’s name) met as struggling actors in NYC. He was cast in “Hair” (“I was on Broadway!” he insists more than once during the show), but was injured on stage and left the cast. She was auditioning and performing, too, but after a while they realized they wanted to branch out, do their own thing.
“In New York, we were working on other people’s projects,” Dodd says. “We wanted to own our own work and not rely on so many people to put up a product. We started writing material and realized that we didn’t have to live in New York.”
Enter Failure #3: “We accidentally moved to Boulder, Colorado,” which wasn’t really a good lifestyle fit, with all the “Boulder Jesus” and overly athletic types abounding. But it was there that they further developed their work, thanks to a friend who supplied encouragement and money to hone their act and take it on the road. Since 2017 they’ve been performing it steadily, first all over Colorado, then slowly making their way into venues here — Dream Away Lodge, The Barn at Egremont Inn, Race Brook Lodge, and The Foundry. Between those gigs and the several summers Dodd had spent at Shakespeare & Company earlier in her career, there was a familiarity with the Berkshires. They moved back east in 2019 — but to our kinder and gentler part of the world.
At a party in Becket, they met musician Johnny Irion, booker for the Apple Tree Inn’s music programming. The inn’s manager invited the duo to do a cabaret, the first of its kind there. The Belleflower Restaurant didn’t have a setup for a stage or lighting, so Dodd and Badger had a hand in designing a cabaret-ready space under the striped tented ceiling. They’ve sold out every show there. Next summer they’ll be taking "The Failure Cabaret" abroad — to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, no less. They were slated to appear last summer, so, of course, that was a no go, but the organizers have kept their venue and timeslot for them. They’re scheduled to do 25 shows in 26 days while still working their remote day jobs, he in advertising, she in executive recruiting.
“Moving here was the best decision we’ve ever made,” Dodd says. Good thing, that. I'd hate to see moving to the Berkshires become the next item in their list of failures. With sold-out shows at the Apple Tree and and an engagement lined up at the Fringe Festival, it looks like The Fremonts may need to rethink the title of their cabaret.
To keep up with The Fremonts and where they’ll be performing next, follow their Facebook page.
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