When I was a teenag­er, Bag­dad Café was one of my cult movies. This bit­ter­sweet sto­ry of friend­ship and self-affir­ma­tion in the mid­dle of the desert had an unlike­ly appeal to me. Although I was only 14 (or prob­a­bly less), I could total­ly iden­ti­fy to these women. My lit­tle sub­ur­ban city seemed as bor­ing as this hole in the mid­dle of nowhere. I quick­ly became obsessed with the haunt­ing song from the movie, “Call­ing You”, and stayed focused on some lyrics: “We both know a change is com­ing, com­ing clos­er, sweet release”. In my non-event­ful life, I kept hop­ing that some­thing would hap­pen. I would lock myself in my room and I would keep play­ing the record (yes, CDs were very new at the time and I didn’t have any). My par­ents got sick with the song and from down­stairs, would ask me to turn the vol­ume down. Par­ents seem a world apart when you are a teenager.

I was very excit­ed to hear that Bag­dad Café has been turned into a stage musi­cal and that none oth­er than Jevet­ta Steele, the singer who cre­at­ed “Call­ing You”, would be play­ing the role of Bren­da, the tough African-Amer­i­can own­er of the café.
Lit­tle did I know that see­ing Bag­dad Café would be such a time trav­el­ling expe­ri­ence… on many lev­els. That 00’s show, based on an 80’s film, had a 90’s feel­ing to it. It was kind of unset­tling at first. But, why not?
Then you real­ize that the show also has very mod­ern themes to it. When the size-plus Ger­man woman holds the lit­tle black baby in her arms, I couldn’t help but think of Madon­na and David Ban­da Mwale Cic­cone Ritchie, her new baby. But on stage, they use a doll as the baby, which makes paper work much sim­pler, I guess.
Then Jas­min get bored with it and decides to get the place cleaned up. That’s when I remem­bered why I liked the movie so much. Clean­ing has always been one of my favourite pas­times: I clean to for­get about the mess in my real life. That’s why the places I live in are usu­al­ly neat (except for shelves that are out my reach and sight). Years before Bree Van De Kamp in Des­per­ate House­wives, Jas­min Münchg­stet­tner was my first role-model.

Then, some­how, I got lost. On stage, some town folks were act­ing (and walk­ing) weird­ly and I sud­den­ly won­dered if I wasn’t see­ing Deliv­er­ance, the musi­cal. Then a men­tal­ly-chal­lenged girl walks in the mid­dle of a heart-wrench­ing duet between Jas­min and Bren­da and I thought: What is it now? Nell the musi­cal? Or maybe the actress made a wrong entrance and decid­ed to play dumb, think­ing that no one would notice?
For­tu­nate­ly, toward the end of Act II, we get to hear a reprise of “Call­ing You” and I found my way back into the show. For one moment, I have to admit I saw myself back in my teenage room, with its walls cov­ered by cheap posters of Madon­na, A‑ha, Whit­ney Hous­ton, Kim Wilde and even Michael J. Fox and Saman­tha Fox (who, although they bear the same last name, are total­ly dif­fer­ent from one another).

After the show, I couldn’t help but crash the lit­tle open­ing night cock­tail where celebri­ties of all sorts rushed fever­ish­ly, des­per­ate to have a drink, the the­atre being so hot (hey, the action takes place in the desert after all). The “par­ty” was also a time-trav­el­ling expe­ri­ence. It was such a weird but com­fort­ing feel­ing to see all these stars from yes­ter­year as I remem­bered their faces from TV shows of the 80’s (such as L’Académie des Neuf, the French ver­sion of Hol­ly­wood Squares). Although I don’t know these peo­ple per­son­al­ly, it was like bump­ing into long-time friends or find­ing an old ted­dy bear in a card­board box. I was also glad to see that most of these peo­ple were still alive (although bare­ly for a cou­ple of them).

I left the par­ty with that strange lit­tle feel­ing of time pass­ing by. Almost twen­ty years lat­er, lots of things have changed, of course, but some haven’t. Steele’s voice still gives me goose bumps but my par­ents are not down­stairs to ask me to turn the vol­ume down. And even if it’s hard to admit it, I have grown old­er, but also wis­er. And I’m not going to wait for some­thing to hap­pen any­more. I’m going to make it hap­pen by myself. And I’m start­ing tomorrow.