ARTS&LIFE CABARET
and a Cabaret 313 rings in Valentine’s Day weekend with Broadway couple Josh Young and Emily Padgett. JACKIE HEADAPOHL DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL
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hen Broadway actor Josh Young originally wrote the Cabaret Valjean, Cosette and a String Quartet before the pandemic lockdown in 2020, he had no idea that it would be nearly two years before he would perform it in front of an audience, but he’s thrilled it’s finally going to happen. On Feb. 12, Cabaret 313 will host Young and his wife, Emily Padgett, to ring in Valentine’s Day weekend for a night of cabaret performances in the Great Hall inside the Detroit Institute of Arts. Valjean, Cosette and a String Quartet is a musical tribute to the couple’s favorite decade of musical theater: the 1980s. The program features music from Les Misérables, Cats and Phantom of the Opera, among others. Young and Padgett will be joined by the Kalkaska String Quartet. The Michigan-based ensemble performs both classical music as well as original arrangements of popular contemporary songs. The quartet is made up of violinist Meg Rohrer, violinist Emelyn Bashour, violist Nathaniel Cornell and cellist Wesley Hornpetrie.
Padgett grew up in North Carolina before starting her Broadway career. She is known for her work on Broadway as Daisy Hilton in Side Show and Sherrie Christian in Rock of Ages, as well as for originating the roles of Lucy Grant in Steve Martin and Edie Brickell’s Bright Star and Mrs. Bucket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She and Young met on “kind of a blind date,” she said. Although they knew of each other and shared the same talent manager, they had never worked together before. Their talent manager set them up on a date, not thinking it would last. “It Josh Young lasted,” Padgett said with a laugh. She now works as a lecturer and dance and vocal coach at OU. Young is a Tony Award-nominated actor who made his Broadway debut as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, which transferred to New York after an acclaimed run at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared in The Grapes of Wrath, Evita and Kiss Me, Kate at Stratford, as well as a national tour of Les Miserables and an international tour of West Side Story. He also performed in A Little Night Music, A Chorus Line, Hairspray and Othello. NEWCOMERS TO MICHIGAN Young grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia and had his bar Young and Padgett, who live in Lake Orion, both teach at mitzvah at a Conservative congregation in his hometown. Emily Padgett Oakland University. They moved to Michigan in 2019 — He’s been singing since elementary school. “My teachers took right after the birth of their daughter, Adele May — so Young could notice and saw I had some talent,” he said. “I had supportive parents take a position as assistant professor of theater at OU. Six months later, who put me in community theater — Young People’s Theatre Workshop COVID hit, everybody went into lockdown and Broadway dimmed its in Swarthmore, Pa., where I learned to love musical theater.” After collights. lege, Young returned to that theater to teach. “We felt lucky,” said Padgett, who converted to Judaism before marYoung recalls his Broadway debut as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar as rying Young in 2018, “but we were brand new in town with a little baby a role where his Judaism really came into play. and few friends.” “I looked at Judas as the hero trying to save the Jewish people and
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FEBRUARY 10 • 2022
