MU alumna Lindsey Alley returned to her alma mater Saturday with a cabaret-slash-standup performance that satirized her dating life and career.
Alley, who received her Bachelor of Arts in Theater in 2000, was a Mouseketeer alongside Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera (a credit, she said, that “just won’t die”), in the early 1990s. She has performed in Broadway and off-Broadway shows, movies and regional theater around the country.
“Lindsey, Who?” is a one-woman act in which Alley tells stories about her escapades in show business and personal life. Interspersed with original songs, Disney numbers and even a rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time,” Alley’s stories span from how she met her accompanist, Rick Leonard (on a gay cruise, which she calls her “Getting Paid Without Getting Laid” tour) to her extremely awkward audition to play Belle in Broadway’s “Beauty and the Beast.”
“There’s nothing really precious in my life,” she said. “Everything is up for grabs, from my love life to shitty auditions.”
Martini glass in hand, Alley spoke to the intimate crowd with charm and ease, asking them about their likes and dislikes and calling out those who might be judging her life choices.
She began the show by telling the audience a little bit about herself.
“I’m everybody’s girl,” she said. “But I could never be a cowhand’s girl. I can’t keep my calves together.”
In one song, “That’s All,” Alley describes her perfect man as, “A fella who will turn me on/Will bring me things from Cinnabon/With a dick as big as Oregon/That’s all.”
“He doesn’t have to be Brad Pitt, for God’s sake,” she continued. “Bradley Cooper’s fine.”
She also sang of aspirations everybody could relate to, such as being rich, famous and powerful, without doing any of the work and spoke of the horrors of online dating websites, for which she is constantly cropping the cellulite out of her profile pictures.
Alley then went on to describe her horrific “Beauty and the Beast” audition: while singing “Time After Time” onstage, the casting director was barely listening as she breastfed her 2-year-old. It was just Alley, the toddler and a two-inch-long, pink National Geographic nipple, she said.
Alley’s raunchy cabaret act has taken her around the world (mostly on gay cruise ships), to places from Singapore to Ukraine to the Baltics.
During her time at MU, Alley played Rizzo in “Grease” and Adelaide in “Guys and Dolls” at the Rhynsburger Theater. Her favorite performance was her role in “Into the Woods.”
Alley’s return to MU was an excellent experience, she said.
“It was wonderful and thrilling to see my professors,” she said. “It was a really good feeling.”
Although she has yet to encounter A-list fame and Hollywood wealth, Alley said, she is still very happy with her life and career.
“I may not be rolling in the dough, but I’m very happy most of the time, which isn’t nothing in this life,” she said.
