Friday night I headed across the river to go see Storm perform a song from Cabaret. The performance was for a taping of Live Wire, a local radio show that is taped in front of a live audience at the Aladdin Theater. The website for Live Wire describes the show as, “music, scintillating conversations, sketch comedy and performances from the famous and fascinating to the unknown and unabashed.”

I was really excited because, oh how I hate to admit this, I have never seen Storm perform live. The whole city is buzzing about her theatre debut in Cabaret, so I had to see and hear what all the fuss was about.

Dressed in a long clingy black dress, she sat across from her interviewer, Courtenay Hameister, arms thrown back over the chair, legs sprawled in front of her like she was about to have an intimate conversation with a close friend, not an audience of five hundred. She spoke candidly about her past, which included acting school until she realized she “didn’t like actors with all their feelings and emotions.” She decided to take the role of Sally Bowles because it terrified her to have to take the stage as someone other then Storm Large. She says the process is intense and draining but that she loves every second of it. She has realized, like the actors from her adolescence, she has some feelings and emotions too.

The song she chose was “Maybe This Time” and she was phenomenal. The audience erupted as she finished, people flying out of their chairs to give a standing ovation to, who I am certain, is the next darling of theater.