Cabaret (1966)

I’m putting “1966” on this because that’s when the musical first came out, although I’m most familiar with my cast recording of the 1998 revival with Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson. There’s also the movie, which I’ve seen as well, Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories that inspired the show (particularly Sally Bowles,) and Isherwood’s memoir of his experiences that inspired the stories, Christopher and His Kind (although the memoir doesn’t lean as heavily on the people who inspired the Berlin Stories characters as the BBC adaptation of it does.) What I’m saying is, I have a lot of exposure to the various permutations of this material.

The American writer Cliff Bradshaw comes to Berlin in the 1930s, where he takes a flat and begins the quintessential starving-artist lifestyle in a city where the coming rumble of thunder is drowned out by the nightlife. Cliff becomes entangled with Sally Bowles, an English dancer at the seedy Kit Kat Club. As Cliff and Sally get caught up in their own lives, which bring equal parts elation and heartbreak, the specter of the approaching war becomes harder and harder to ignore.

Cabaret is such an interesting show, probably my favorite of Kander & Ebb’s. I love the juxtaposition between the decadence/debauchery of the Kit Kat Club and the building Nazi presence in the city, as fascism/anti-Semitism roots deeper and deeper while everyone is dancing. Isherwood’s characters, like the stoic landlady Fräulein Schneider and the inimitable Sally, are brought to life on the stage with as much individual immediacy as they bear on the page. Cliff, I think, feels a little more Standard-Issue Protagonist (he’s the character that acquires a new mostly-interchangable identity in every permutation of the story,) but then, he’s a straightwashed stand-in for Isherwood himself, who wrote The Berlin Stories with a much more outward focus – “I am a camera,” he famously said.

Then there’s the music, which brings the story across and pulls out the themes in such an effective way. It knows when to shift from bright to dark, when to be flippant and irreverent, and when to get real. The opening number, “Willkommen,” is a classic, as is the showstopping “Cabaret” (I love it when upbeat music is used during sad/dark moments – what a treat for the actress who plays Sally.) I also adore slower numbers like “Maybe This Time” (added for the film and incorporated into subsequent productions) and “I Don’t Care Much” (also a later addition,) and I’m really enamored with the peppy-but-twisted “If You Could See Her.”

Overall, an engrossing show that I’ve only come to appreciate more as its own invention since digging into more of the source material. I saw a regional production of it a few years ago and greatly enjoyed seeing it onstage (if “enjoyed” is the right word – it’s a fine show, but in an unsettling way.)

Warnings

Strong thematic elements, language (including anti-Semitic slurs,) sexual content, drinking/smoking, and violence (including hate crimes.)