"Musical Mondays" at Hell's Kitchen, May 2017

Musical Mondays at Hell's Kitchen is a monthly cabaret series featuring fabulous local talent performing songs from musical theater around a theme. The theme for this month's show, the 49th in the series, was musicals of the last ten years. My favorites in this time period include Spring Awakening, Next to Normal, The Book of Mormon, Once, Hamilton, and the very recently Tony-nominated Come From Away and Dear Evan Hansen. But only the last one made the cut for Musical Mondays. Which isn't surprising, perhaps my choices are too obvious, and Musical Mondays has always been great about picking the lesser known (to me anyway) songs and musicals. As always, it was a super fun night of celebrating musical theater, enjoying performances by local talent, people watching, and eating and drinking (it's always Happy Hour at Musical Mondays).

The entry fee to this wonderful event is a suggested donation of $5, which gets you entered into a drawing for upcoming shows. This month they gave away tickets to History Theatre's lovely new musical Sweet Land and the next show in the Ordway's edutainment series Broadway Songbook - Hollywood and Broadway. The six featured performers, along with musical director and accompaniest Kyle Picha and hosts Max Wojtanowicz and (belatedly) Sheena Janson, are listed below, along with where you can see them next.

• Ruthie Baker - reprising her role in History Theatre's smash hit musical Glensheen, back for the third time in July
• Eric Morris - directing Ghost, the Musical at Old Log Theatre, opening in June
• Hope Nordquist - performing at the Troubadour and in Mu's Francis Chan Jr's Exotic Oriental Murder Mystery at the Guthrie studio opening next week
• Adam Rousar - appearing in Awesome '80s Prom at Camp Bar, upcoming
• Leslie Vincent - performing at the Troubadour and in some shows at the Minnesota Fringe Festival in August
• David B Young - performing with Twin Cities Cabaret
• Kyle Picha - music directing Ghost, the Musical at Old Log Theatre, opening in June
• Max Wojtanowicz - making his Guthrie debut in Sunday in the Park with George, opening in June
• Sheena Jansen - traveling with the Children's Theatre to a conference in South Africa

Here's the songlist, which is always posted on the Musical Mondays Facebook page the day after the performance (I added the years because I'm a musical theater nerd and and math nerd).

• Freak Flag (Shrek, 2008) - all
• The Revolutionary Costume for Today (Grey Gardens, 2006) - Hope
• What it Means to Be a Friend (13, 2008) - David
• Raining (Rocky, 2014) - Leslie
• In Love With You (First Date, 2013) - Adam
• Someday (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, premiered in 1999 in Berlin, American premiere in 2014) - Leslie and David
• Fight the Dragons (Big Fish, 2013) - Eric
• Let’s Be Bad (Bombshell [Smash, 2012]) - Ruthie
• Neverland (Finding Neverland, 2015) - Eric
• Screw Loose (Cry-Baby: The Musical, 2008) - Ruthie
• Can I Close the Door (Motown, 2013) - David
• One Last Prayer (Republic, 2009) - Adam
• I Had a Vision (Bright Star, 2016) - Ruthie and Eric
• I’ll Be Here (Ordinary Days, 2008) - Hope
• Right Hand Man (Something Rotten, 2015) - Leslie
• You Will Be Found (Dear Evan Hansen, 2016) - all

Musical Mondays is at 7 pm on the first Monday of every month at Hell's Kitchen in downtown Minneapolis. The next one is June 5 with the theme of Pride. Watch their Facebook page for details.

the lovely and talented cast of Musical Mondays