Photo Flash: Dan Mendeloff Celebrates 2,500th Show as Stage Right Props Person at CABARET!

Dan Mendeloff, Cabaret's stage right props person, celebrated his 2,500th show at Saturday's matinee. Dan worked on the show from the start in 1998 at the Kit Kat Club/Henry Miller, moved the show to Studio 54 in 1999 and stayed with it through the entire run. He has been working on the current revival since the beginning as well.

Including understudies, he has been there through 21 Emcees and 24 Sallys, and has lit over 10,500 cigars for the actors/actresses. He is in costume for every show, moving the chaise in and out of Cliff Bradshaw's room, the dressing room trunk for Sally Bowles, and countless Bentwood chairs. He makes sure Alan Cumming, the first and now current Emcee, has Sally's microphone for the show's title number, and he also sets the giant chair for "Don't Tell Mama."

While the show was at the Kit Kat Club and there were no departmental lines for the crew, Dan was responsible for helping the "Two Ladies" out of their trunk onstage and flying in the giant light-up pineapples. Even some of the props in the current production returned to the show thanks to Dan; he saved such items as writer Cliff Bradshaw's notebook, which he filled out with Cliff's notes, always a play on Christopher Isherwood's "I am a camera" line from The Berlin Stories, to keep the actors amused.