A Cabaret Smorgasbord : Couple’s unusual show will move to a West Hollywood stage in a benefit performance to fight AIDS

“I’m in love with a Medfly,

But she’s going away.

‘ Cause I live in Covina,

And they’re going to spray.”

Alan Chapman, the composer of that ditty, is an associate professor of music at Occidental College, with a doctorate from Yale. His wife of 4 1/2 years, singer Karen Benjamin, has a master’s degree in opera from USC and is a member of the Los Angeles company of “The Phantom of the Opera.” But away from the hallowed halls of academe and the Ahmanson, the couple for the past year have teamed up for their own cabaret act, performing “I’m in Love With a Medfly” and nearly 25 other Chapman creations, in a revue irreverently titled “Songs of Life, Love and Antelopes.”

Their next appearance is Monday evening at the Gardenia in West Hollywood, where they will join “Phantom” cast member D.C. Anderson in a benefit performance for Equity Fights AIDS.

Chapman, who accompanies Benjamin on the piano and also sings, describes their set as “a variety of songs on a variety of themes, some funny but some, we hope, that people will be able to make an emotional connection with.”

Certainly the title captures that intent. “Antelopes” refers to a number Chapman wrote as a college freshman ( “Run to me with the speed of the antelope/Come with the swiftness of the gazelle” ), which he considers his first real attempt at crafting a song. It is one of several “Animal Love” selections in the act, including Benjamin’s ode to her aged basset hound, “I Love My Doggie,” and the only song that utilizes another composer’s music, “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Lamb of Mine.”

The songs’ humorous nature notwithstanding, Benjamin said, “We don’t do shtick , or use props--the show is the material. A lot of different emotions are displayed. There are those funny ones, but then he’ll turn around and make you cry.”

Indeed, one of the act’s most affecting songs is “Something in the Way He Looked at Me,” which depicts a couple on different romantic wave lengths:

In time we grew together, the way that lovers do.

I found myself imagining the way that it could be.

But when I dreamed out loud, I dreamed alone.

I’d say, “What if?” and he’d say, “Wait and see.”

And then there is Chapman’s poignantly autobiographical “I Never Said Goodbye to My Father”:

It happened quickly,

Many miles away.

So I gathered up my sadness and I went there

Too late for any words I had to say.

. . . What would I have said?

I think I know.

I would not have said “Goodbye” to my father.

I would have said, “Don’t go.”

The act even gives a nod to the San Fernando Valley, with a number about “That Little Waiver Theater in the Valley.” And there are ever-changing topical selections as well. For tomorrow night’s benefit, the duo will premiere a new song that, Chapman said, “presents the idea of being positive, not passive, about AIDS. Rather than making a melancholy statement about loss, it goes in the other direction and is an affirmation of power.”

Although their cabaret act is barely a year old, Benjamin and Chapman have been performing together since they met in 1979, when Benjamin, as a freshman music major at Occidental, enrolled in Chapman’s classes. They did not become romantically involved until after her graduation, and married in 1986.

In those earlier years they appeared primarily at local coffeehouses and clubs, doing Broadway show music. “Before, the focus was more on me,” Benjamin recalled. “Alan was just the accompanist. I prefer this.”

The two created their own act at the suggestion of Jeannine Frank, founder of “Parlor Performances,” which presents music and comedy in private homes. Their debut, in fact, took place in their living room in Los Angeles in April, 1990. Since then they have performed at the Gardenia, Verdi Ristorante in Santa Monica, and for private functions such as a medical fraternity banquet and the annual trade meeting of the Southern California Rock Products and Ready-Mixed Concrete Assn. (for which Chapman composed a “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”-type song, “Concrete Is the Answer”).

Said Chapman: “What we do now is us as a couple. More and more, the material comes out of that.”

Accordingly, their opening number, “Marriage Is Easy, Show Biz Ain’t,” humorously describes the travails of combining a personal and professional relationship. “Do you want to know how we almost got divorced?” Chapman asked. “Working together. You expect instant perfection in rehearsal. We had to realize that there’s a tendency to be a little impatient and intolerant of each other, and that rather than let it put a damper on things, to take a few deep breaths and realize it’s just a rehearsal.”

“It’s different working with your spouse,” added Benjamin, whose other credits include “Blame It on the Movies” at the Coast Playhouse, the California Music Theatre production of “The Most Happy Fella” and solo work with the Los Angeles Bach Festival and the San Diego Symphony. “I did one show where the star was the director’s wife, and he was more demanding of her than of anyone else. We remember now that . . . it will all come together, and performing will be a joy.”

For the time being, those performing opportunities are restricted to Benjamin’s nights off from “Phantom of the Opera,” where, as understudy for the enigmatic ballet mistress Madame Giry, and the “swing” (or general understudy) for six ensemble roles, she goes on about eight times a month. The challenges of playing a considerably older woman, not to mention having to know every line, costume and wig for those six other roles, would make doing a cabaret act seem like a piece of cake, right?

Wrong, Benjamin said. “ ‘Phantom’ is easier. In cabaret, you can’t hide behind a character or anything else when you get up there in front of everyone. You have to be you. The more you do it, of course, the more comfortable you get, and the more fun it is for the audience. A lot of our act is improvised, from the thoughts going on in your head. So performing is like the cliche about the duck on the water--you may see it floating, calm and serene, but underneath, it’s paddling like mad.”

Chapman is more accustomed to being himself in front of an audience. In addition to teaching his classes in music theory and jazz, he gives the lectures before the concerts of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra--about 35 dates this past season--and some of the lectures and previews for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, L.A. Master Chorale, Pasadena Symphony and Orange County Performing Arts Center. “It’s not unusual to get 800 or 1,200 people for the Philharmonic,” he says. “So to go out there and be just one person, and be deep and funny at the same time, is what I do all the time. I’ve always been a ham.”

The two hope to increase their bookings after “Phantom” finally closes--which, rumor has it, might be in January, Benjamin said. And they might work up another act, tentatively called “Theirs and Ours,” combining Chapman’s music with that of other composers.

Individually, Benjamin wants to do more symphony solo work, and also venture into pop. Chapman plans to finish his musical, “VIII,” about King Henry VIII, selections from which are included in their show, and would contribute to a revue--now in the discussion stage--at the Santa Monica Improv.

He is also pursuing work as a writer of special musical material; past assignments have run the gamut from Japanese theme park holiday music to an opening number for a revue by a well-known gay actor. His “Lady Lou,” a musical loosely based on the work of the poet Robert Service, plays every year in Juneau, Alaska.

In the meantime, with Benjamin regularly performing works by her husband and by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, whose music does she prefer?

“I don’t even have to be diplomatic!” she said with a laugh. “Alan’s, of course.”

The benefit performance for Equity Fights AIDS begins Monday at 9 p.m. at the Gardenia, 7066 Santa Monica Blvd. Admission: $8 cover with two-drink minimum. Dinner served from 7 p.m. Reservations (dinner and show, or show only): (213) 467-7444.