Myth America, or No Gurlz Allowed, the original musical cabaret presented October 25 and 26 in the Cyber Café, began with a trio of songs about the way women and girls are perceived, which set the tone for the production.

"Thank Heaven (for Little Girls)" featured two men, Dan Ciba and Ben Gooch, singing while the female members of the cast came forward during breaks in the song to give facts about the female condition. "The Girl from Ipanema" turned from cute to scary fairly quickly as the girls who stood behind giant towels went from singing to accusatory shouting about this "tall and tan and young and lovely" girl who never notices men on the beach. The final song in the opening was "Yellow Polka Dot Bikini" which ended with the singers, dressed in their own bikinis over the black clothes they wore throughout, turning the line about the girl being afraid to come out of the locker from playful to ominous.

The cabaret was an interesting, amusing and occasionally very funny production that was, for the most part, well thought-out and cleverly sequenced. Ideas presented in the comedic skits were further developed in the songs that came between them. Some of the songs were funny: a new spin on "Put on a Happy Face" where women are encouraged to put on a new face, but warned that they may not be able to frown or smile, and "McDonald's Girl", a song by The Blenders, and perhaps the best love song ever involving a line about a "polyester uniform", sung by Ciba to Brianna Cooney's angry, goth fast-food worker. Other songs were the serious antithesis of the comedy that came between the musical numbers: "Since You Stayed Here", a song about learning to get used to home after a loved one has left, was affectively expressed by Kim Casey, and "When I Was a Boy", about a girl who spent a night as a boy with Peter Pan and is confused by and resistant to what is expected of women in gender relationships was simply and beautifully sung by Megan Shelley.

Between these and other songs were skits that ranged from very funny to interesting, apropos to seemingly out of place. The topics dealt with ranged from perceptions of women by other women, dating, stereotypes and beauty. "Prince Charming" a view of a first date rant by a woman who has been on one too many bad dates to believe in Prince Charming anymore was performed with a tough humor by Kim Casey. Another amusing view of dating came from "First date," when the awkwardness of a first date is added to by the woman's obsessive following of the "points system" at dinner. "Wax on, Wax off" was a clever glimpse into a southern beauty parlor where the women make fun of a man who cannot stand the pain of waxing, but jump up on their chairs screaming when they see a bug. The question of what is to be praised and mocked is raised; is it a sign of superior strength that women can endure that kind of pain, or a sign of foolishness that they put themselves through it in the first place? These issues are raised again in "Beauty Call" when the female cast members on stage run through lists of what women wax, die, cut and other painful steps taken to make themselves "better."

Towards the end of the cabaret, the theme seemed to be lost a bit in the last skits. "Survivor: Magic Kingdom" was exactly what it sounds like, Survivor with Disney characters, and while it perhaps could have dealt with the unrealistic ways women are portrayed in animation, it never went very deep and was never very amusing. "E-mail Rant" was funny, but really had nothing to do with the gender roles theme of the show. "Momilies" featured a quintet of women, Susan Day, Brianna Cooney, Lisa Burrascano, Tricia Ieronimo-Buffolino and Gina Marie Paulson, sitting in a circle knitting, smoking and tossing out classic mother lines for their own amusement. While it is a bit of a stretch to tie the clichés of mothering to gender roles, I was willing to make that leap, because it was my favorite sketch in the cabaret. Each mother was quirky and strange in her own way, but Paulson's insane mother had me amazed and amused with every mom-ism that she uttered.

The cabaret ended with the skit "Happily Ever After", which was a disappointing end to an otherwise solid show. The message of the final monologue was "and they all lived happily ever after," a quite different message than what the show sent as a whole. While it was a comedic look at gender roles, the show also had some important messages to relay, one of which was that women are still subject to prejudices, misconceptions and torturous body image problems. Hopefully, the final message the audience left with was not from the final monologue, but with the final song, "Someone is Here", a song about strength and the inability to ignore a group of women with such a powerful, unified voice.

"Myth America" was a fine cabaret which thankfully never took itself too seriously. Important issues were explored through comedy and song, and aside from the occasional comic misstep or dropped line, the biggest problem lay not with the acting, but the inclusion of skits that did not fit with the theme of the show.