8/3/2024 CABARET Actor’s Express
FLASH AND INTIMACY
Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret has a long history of production, revival, and revision. It is a play of big ideas and intimate moments, a personal story writ large on the canvas of history. Every production (as well as the 1972 movie version) is a panoply of flash and spectacle and intimacy and production.
And now, Freddie Ashley and an outstanding ensemble of actors have staged a version that, while missing a few opportunities, nevertheless celebrates the timelessness of its theme and especially its evocation of current political excess. I liked it very much indeed. And its contemporary relevance frightens me very much.
Based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories (especially “Goodbye to Berlin”), Cabaret is a series of episodes in the life of Cliff Bradshaw, a writer “from Harrisburg PA (**)” who has come to Berlin for inspiration. We see the people in his life, his neighbors in Fraulein Schneider’s Boarding House and his friends at the Kit Kat Club, a seedy little Cabaret specializing in the naughtier side of life. And, especially, we meet Sally Bowles, a young singer with an over-sized zest for living and an under-sized talent, who “skillfully manages to talk her way into” Cliff’s room.
Like the 1998 Broadway revival, this production is staged as if everything were at the Kit Kat Club, including the “dialogue scenes.” Chorus girls (and boys) set scenes and hand on props, then sit and watch, clearing set pieces in time for the next Cabaret number. It’s an effective concept, reducing the need for elaborate scene changes, and underscoring the allegorical weight of the cabaret itself. It’s (more or less) the exact opposite of the approach taken by Bob Fosse in the 1972 movie, in which all the songs outside the club were dropped (and the stories extensively rewritten). That approach, effective for film, established a “Cinema Reality” that transcended the conceit of standard movie musicals and made the story extraordinarily effective. The approach taken here creates the same effect, but with an opposite mind set – even though theatre-goers accept the conceit of musical theatre, putting everything “on the stage” is a constant reminder that we are seeing the story through a highly theatrical filter.
Where this production is not as effective is with a few of its moments. The choreography struck me as repetitive and overly simplistic, the emcee’s childlike falsetto made the first chorus of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” false and irritating, the in-German segment of “Married” was too static, and the ending was a bit of a let-down (especially against my memory of the gut-wrenching finale of the 1998 Broadway revival and the 2017 Serenbe staging). Another minor quibble is that the choral costumes would be more effective if they were a bit more distressed. Yes, the Kit Kat “girls and boys” are adorned with sleazy satin-ware, but it all looks as if it just came "off the rack." May I (humbly) suggest the costumers add some holes, and put both men and women in runner-ridden fishnets or silk stockings, some fraying and fading to tatters, and perhaps even adding some blemishes and scabbies onto the actors? That, more than the costumes themselves, would really sell the decadent nature of the Cabaret. As it is, the look is far too “classy” and almost elegantly sexy.
But these all pale in comparison to the show’s strengths – the wildly exaggerated gender-fluidity that is more period-authentic than expected, the insidious (and slow) introduction of the Nazi mindset, the open-minded acceptance of anyone “different” than the “mainstream” (was there even a “mainstream” in pre-Nazi Berlin?), the mere suggestion of props and furniture to set the “outside the Cabaret” sequences, and, especially, the inclusion of us the audience in the story, in its world, and, especially, in its easily influenced ever-changing world-view. And, for good measure, there's the "If You Can See Her" dancer who tumbles and walks with the four-on-the-floor gait of a real simian (and of course, the final line of that number left this particular audience in stunned silence).
Where this production truly excels is in its cast. It’s rare to see this fine a collection of talent. Callie Johnson’s Sally Bowles is young and impetuous and fills the stage every time she’s on. Her “Mayfair” accent seems intentionally false and exaggerated (as if her background were as thin and garish as her nail polish). And she sings like an angel. Yes, I know, Sally is supposed to be a sub-class singer, but there’s a lot to be said when the Kander & Ebb songs are belted out this well – dramaturgical verisimilitude be damned! When she gets to the title number, she starts out lost and alone but eventually embraces the full-on, I’ll live every moment to the hilt fervor that is positively mesmerizing. (An ironic historical digression, Christopher Isherwood based Sally Bowles on Jean Ross, a British chanteuse who eventually fled Berlin to become a journalist during the Spanish Civil War. Isherwood even delayed publication of his book until he had Ross’s explicit permission to include details from her life.)
Casting BIPOC actor Terence Smith as Cliff was a stroke of genius. It makes the character more interesting than the “bland observer” role he usually assumes, and the subtext of his ethnicity is fully acknowledged and forms an iron-base for Cliff’s ultimate rejection of Berlin and his so-called friend Ernst (a slyly effective Truman Griffin) who very obviously strikes up the friendship just so he can “use” the American. This was the best and most intriguing Clifford I’ve seen, and that includes the 1998 Broadway revival.
As the emcee, Hayden Rowe combines a charming sleaziness with a fresh-faced innocence and a calculated viciousness that can be positively scary. And he wears gender-fluidity like a second skin (no offence to Thomas Harris’s Buffalo Bill intended). Megan K. Hill gives us a Fraulein Kost who survives, even thrives with the meagre skills she has, and who becomes a “surrogate” for all the Germans who not only allowed the rise of Nazism but embraced it as a promise to “Machen Sie Deutschland wieder großartig.”
As the older couple (Fraulein Schneider and Herr Shultz), Mary Lynn Owen and Steve Hudson are better than ever, alternately funny and moving. Their scenes and songs click like castanets. Ms. Owen especially turns in a performance that hits every note right, that joins her impressive bio with strength and appeal. Her Act II “What Would You Do?” is heartbreaking in its simplicity, in its sense of loss, in its sad inevitability.
The ensemble is tight and creates individual characters that are every bit as detailed as the “group character” they bring. This is definitely a cast to be proud of.
Cabaret is a brilliantly directed, superbly performed revisit to an old favorite, a worthy addition to the string of classic musicals Actor’s Express re-interprets for a modern audience. Yes, those of us who witnessed the 1998 revival may regret the “less-than” final moment here, but it is still strong, effective, and memorable. We often forget that the pre-Nazi Berlin on display was a smorgasbord of sexual freedom and extravagance, but we know what’s coming just a few years ahead.
If only that historical hindsight would come to us before it happens again, which is growing more and more likely with each new rally and speech and “Truth Social” posting.
When all is said and done, this is not only the perfect time to revisit Cabaret, it is the perfect time for THIS Cabaret.
-- Brad Rudy (BKRudy@aol.com #aeCabaret)
https://actors-express.com/play-page-cabaret/
** Of course, I’m also a writer from Harrisburg, PA, so I feel Cliff’s pain J…