This past weekend, a number of musically gifted students put on a romantically themed performance at the Palace Theater. Presented by the Colgate’s Student Musical Theater Company (SMuTCo), Somebody to Love: A Valentine’s Day Cabaret celebrated a number of Broadway’s greatest love songs and showcased the incredible talent of Colgate’s finest singers and dancers.

This semester’s Cabaret was directed by juniors Kathleen Armenti and Liz Barnett and sophomore Fatima Sowe.

“The theme was created around the idea of Valentine’s Day,” Armenti said. “Everyone has had different experiences with love, so we tried to pick songs that would approach it from all different angles. Happy and sad. Joyful and vengeful.”

The choice in songs certainly captured all aspects of love. The opening, full cast number, “Somebody to Love,” was a crowd pleaser, especially for diehard Glee fanatics. But other songs took less traditional approaches to romance, including, “Times Like This” from the musical Lucky Stiff performed by senior Lindsey Simpson, “Serious” from Legally Blonde performed by seniors Sam Daly and Laura McDonald and the very graphic and cynical “In Short” from Edges performed by senior Tessa Drake.

Other standout performances included “Sunrise” from In the Heights, where Barnett and first-year Tim McEvoy played the leading roles. Following “Sunrise” was the full cast performance of “Touch Me” from Spring Awakening, which included a number of memorable solos by the male members of the cast.

A definite crowd favorite was the famously enjoyed “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago, which was performed by seniors Annie Ben-Ami, Drake, Simpson and McDonald, as well as Barnett and Sowe. In this rendition, one of the verses was rewritten to include an all too true reference to the Jug that left everyone in the audience laughing. The show ended on a high note with the last two numbers, “What I Did for Love” from A Chorus Line and “Who Loves You” from Jersey Boys.

This was the first time directing for Armenti, Barnett and Sowe. They attributed their success to inspiration from the directors in the past.

“We are so proud of the show. We could not be happier with how it went. Seniors Lindsey Simpson, Laura McDonald, Tessa Drake and Michael Peterson have directed the past Cabarets that us three directors have performed in and we are so happy to be keeping the tradition going,” Armenti said.

Besides the directors, many other people played significant roles in developing the Cabaret. Music from the pit was provided by seniors Eli Raffeld, Adam Weisbarth and Dan Lasker, juniors Barnett and Caroline Heaney and first-year Taylor Lake. Heads of choreography were junior Benae Beamon and sophomores Sowe and Jack Daly.

From the vast range in song selections to the incredible showcase of vocal talent, A Valentine’s Day Cabaret had something to offer to both the hopeless romantics and cynics of love, as well as everybody else in between.