Yahoo Lifestyle Adam Lambert Makes Bold Political Plea Onstage Just Days After Interrupting 'Cabaret' Performance
Adam Lambert once again spoke out during a performance of Broadway's Cabaret.
The cast surprised the star following the musical's curtain call with a pineapple-shaped cake to mark his 43rd birthday on the evening of Jan. 29.
While Lambert was, of course, grateful for the recognition, joking that the audience's rendition of "Happy Birthday" featured some "great" harmonies, he took the opportunity to address the crowd of theater-goers on a more serious note.
“Thanks everybody for being here. I am so thrilled to be here on my birthday, doing what I love," he announced, before getting down to business. "I just hope that everybody in the audience tonight learned something tonight. Not to bring it down, but man, oh man. I’m an Aquarius and in the spirit of Aquarius, we’re hoping change can happen and it can happen little by little in a place like this. Hopefully, some people were awakened tonight. Ask questions. Do research. Read a book!”
As the audience cheered, he concluded, "I love you! Thank you!"
Lambert's plea followed a break in the show just days earlier when he didn't skip a beat while calling out laughter in the audience during a pivotal scene in the show which takes place during the rise of nazi ideology ahead of World War II.
As Lambert performed “If You Could See Her," a song during which he dances with a gorilla, members of the audience broke out in laughter when he sang, "If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.”
It wasn't "nervous" or "shocked" laughter that the moment often elicits, David Rigano, a musical theater writer and director, recalled in an open letter to the actor after witnessing the moment himself, “but people who found the surprise that it was a Jewish gorilla legitimately funny.”
But as Rigano "[shook his] head that we live in a world that didn’t get the point of that joke," Lambert turned to face the noisemakers and, "without dropping character, without dropping the accent," he corrected them: "No. This is not comedy. Pay attention."
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The director "tearfully" thanked Lambert for addressing the problem in the moment, "especially the week of this inauguration," and noted that much of the rest of the audience seemed to appreciate it, too.
"I really consider it a privilege to be working with such a gifted cast and creative team on a show that has so much to say about what is happening RIGHT NOW," Lambert wrote in response to the message. "It’s been relevant since it premiered in the late 60’s and I HOPE audiences walk away THINKING and feeling empathy towards how marginalized groups can be scapegoated as political strategy."
"That’s my hope and motivation every show; to pull you into an irresistible community and then make you miss us as we are stolen from you," he concluded. "Maybe just maybe we can change some minds."
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