When Andrea Goss was three years old, her parents gave her a wonderful gift: piano lessons. From there she added singing, dancing and acting — all enormously helpful to a successful career in musical theater.
Goss is on her way to Houston, playing Sally Bowles, the iconic character in the national tour of the Tony Award-winning production of Cabaret,
Over the years, there have been several interpretations of Bowles, the Kit Kat Klub entertainer caught in pre-World War II Berlin with a Nazi Party on the rise – is she a second-rate singer, or someone with real talent who hasn’t had a break?
But Goss has focused on other aspects of her character. “I think she is a 19-year-old, very young girl. She’s a survivor. She is energetic and she’s kind of a party girl and she’s really charming, but underneath all of that, she’s still a girl who is scared.”
Goss was one of the Kit Kat girls in the 2014 Broadway revival, where she was also an understudy for the Sally role. The national tour she’s on now has bookings through August of 2017, she says.
“You don’t get a lot of writing like this anymore. How did all the political turmoil in the 1930s happen? How did people let that happen?” she says. “It’s just such a fun piece but at the same time, there’s this gritty underbelly to it. “
Of course, too, there’s the music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb: “Don’t Tell Momma,” “Willkommen” and “Cabaret.” Broadway at the Hobby has brought the show here – in a presentation by Roundabout Theatre Company – for less than a week, so if you want tickets, better get going.
Performances of Cabaret are scheduled for March 22-27 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Hobby Center, 800 Bagby. For information call 713-315-2525 or visit thehobbycenter.org. $25-$115.
This article appears in Mar 3-9, 2016.
