Closing Night Review for 'Sister Robert Anne's Cabaret Class' in Plant City

Tell Kim Mitchell she reminds you of Broadway legend and belter Ethel Merman and you’ve given the community theater veteran one of the best reviews she could hope for. On stage at the Plant City Entertainment Theatre, with her one-woman show, Sister Robert Anne’s Cabaret Class, Mitchell does Merman proud.

“Kim came off the stage the other night and someone told her, ‘My God, you’re like Ethel Merman,’ ” said Shirley Outen, a member of the board for Plant City Entertainment, who also happens to be Mitchell’s mother. “This woman said she loved Ethel Merman, that she saw Ethel Merman on stage, and that seeing Kim actually was like seeing Ethel Merman up on stage again. That, of course, thrilled Kim.”

What thrills Kim as well – along with the community theater veterans she has come to know and love since her first Plant City Entertainment audition 32 years ago – is that she is able to take to the stage again after a determined, and successful, battle against stage 4 colon cancer.

“This is the first time our theater has ever done a one-person show,” Outen said. “At first, being her mother, I was really worried about her, because she still is experiencing the after-effects of chemotherapy. She still has neuropathy in her feet and her hands, which is very painful. In this show, she’s on her feet all the time and I knew it was going to be very difficult.”

But for Kim, it was a passion that needed to be filled, just as when she played  her dream role of Mama Rose in "Gypsy," the role that made Merman a Broadway legend.

"Kim desperately wanted to do Sister Robert Anne's Cabaret Class, and I knew it was good for her morale, so I just refrained from talking her out of it,” Outen said. “She said it all along, this is the dream of her lifetime, to do a one-woman show, and especially with this character that she loves so much.”

In the show, Sister Robert Anne showcases the songs she debuted in the seven highly popular Nunsense musicals, many of which Plant City Entertainment staged as well, with Mitchell in the role of Sister Robert Anne. Humorous stories and audience interaction play a part as well, as Sister Robert Anne instructs audience members in the art of putting together their own cabaret act, all the while showcasing memorable music from award-winning composer Dan Goggin.

Musical accompaniment in the Plant City show is by "brother" Kevin Barta.

“Kim desperately wanted to do the show as a fundraiser for the theater,” Outen said. “This time last year she was hooked up to a chemotheraphy pump and she was very, very ill, very sick. In March, she had her PET scan and her oncologist declared her to be cancer-free.”

The joy of that diagnosis was in direct proportion to the unrelenting determination Mitchell had to crush cancer. In that battle Outen saw a woman, a daughter, supported by strong familial ties, both by blood and by association with the Plant City community theater troupe.

“She told me the other night, ‘I’m so glad you made me go to that audition 32 years ago,’ ” Outen said, about the audition she had read about in the local newspaper, and then encouraged – no, demanded – that her daughter attend.  “I said, ‘Me, too, it gave you a wonderful outlet and hobby and it gave us a family.' And that’s exactly what [Plant City Entertainement] is, a family.”

On stage with Sister Robert Anne’s Cabaret Class, Mitchell sings, in the very last line in the very last song, the words: "I'm here to stay."

"And that's the way Kim feels about cancer," Outen said. "It’s not going to get her down. She’s here to stay.”

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Plant City Entertainment's Sister Robert Anne's Cabaret Class

• The show's final performance is tonight, Dec. 15, at 8 p.m., at the Plant City Entertainment Theater, at 101 North Thomas St. in Plant City.
• Doors open at 7 p.m.
• Tickets cost $10, for members; $12, for senior citizens and students through grade 12; and $14, for general admission.

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