Club 27: A One Woman Confessional Cabaret Triumphs at the Inaugural Manifestival

A figure is slumped over a chair, apparently dozing. The room is filled with dazzling clothes, shoes, and accessories around a chessboard carpet; there is a stack of record albums, one from Amy Winehouse at the top.

Amy was 27. Kurt was 27. Janis was 27. Jimi was 27…

The woman (Faith Pasch) snaps awake at the sound of a ringing telephone, and her Pianist (Alex Parrish) asks, “Are you going to get that?”. The woman herself is, we will learn, a 27-year-old singer, and the significance of that hangs over her like a piano dangling from a high window on a flimsy string. She later muses she has about six months to decide if she’s going to join the club.

“Do I have to?” The Singer asks, re: getting the phone, which they cannot even locate. “Can we make it stop?”

“Why stop it when we can drown it out?” says The Pianist. “Don’t you want to drown?”

“You know I do.”

To the strains of “Paint it Black”, Club 27: A One Woman Confessional Cabaret begins, and it is nothing short of a modern masterwork from author Maeve Z. O’Connor, coupled with a tour de force from Faith Pasch.

Pasch proceeds to give an electrifying performance as she summons the ghosts of rock stars past, and her character wrestles with her own demons as they threaten to pull her into the same abyss. She captivates the audience throughout in a way that both echoes and honors the icons she invokes.

“Audiences like to see their blues singers miserable,” her unnamed character observes. “They like their blues singers to die.”

In addition to his excellent work at the keyboard, Alex Parrish is a compelling second, often contrarian voice, as he admonishes The Singer to set aside her philosophizing and her anecdotes about Janis and Amy.

“Do you hear yourself right now?” he scolds. “…All that waxing poetic, it’s going to catch up to you. You don’t have infinite time—you have here and now. And you’d better do something with it.”

And does she ever—Pasch puts on a tremendous show indeed, her powerhouse vocals perfect for the songs given to us by those much-loved icons. Her earth-rattling renditions of Joplin’s “Move Over” and “Piece of My Heart”, and Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good” are spine-tingling and celebratory, as if to balance out—or perhaps add an exclamation point to—the chaos and darkness at the heart of the proceedings. The already haunting “Riders on the Storm” has never felt more ominous than it did on this anonymous rock singer’s clothing-strewn stage.

“It won’t stop unless you stop it,” says The Pianist. “Sing, or tell them another story. Famous…or dead?” The description of Amy Winehouse’s last days that follows this is heartbreaking; and the observation about the possibly inseparable nature of artistry and addiction, chilling.

“You’re going to end up in a ditch,” says The Pianist.

“Doesn’t matter,” says The Singer, as long as you enjoy the ride there.” But as the phone keeps ringing, the singer wonders if there is another option.

Pasch and Parrish aren’t doing a jukebox musical here—they give every bit of themselves to the music, performing it with a passion and a purpose while honoring the ones who first brought these songs to the public conscience. There’s a desperation underneath the pounding of the keyboard and the banging of the tambourine and the searing vocals—a rage against the candle that burns extra bright and extra brief by the artist’s own design.

The unnamed singer chain smokes, chugs from a Jameson bottle, dances wildly and strikes classic rock star poses in an almost ritualistic, deliberate playing out of the rock and roll story that seemingly has only one resolution. Pasch fearlessly commands the stage and inhabits the character fully; and O’Connor makes sure that the very real people who inspired Club 27 are honored and remembered as human beings who lived, loved, and created, rather than just cautionary tales of the ever-more distant past. It is a remarkable tribute to these artists, an insightful look at the price of fame, and an outstanding piece of live theatre that is not to be missed.

Club 27: A One Woman Confessional Cabaret is presented as part of Diamond Mesh Inc.’s Manifestival. It is performed at the Paradise Factory Theatre through August 9, 2026.

Learn more about the Manifestival at diamondmeshinc.com.