Seeing 'Cabaret'

There are only two musicals that I have ever loved: Les Miserables and Cabaret.

The Les Misèrables is a young man’s musical: it is a poem of hot blood, energy, and passion. It’s the belief of young men (and old fools) that their judgement is unerringly correct and that the nobility of their sentiments insulates them from criticism of what their imagined worlds would cost. It’s a warning to beware those hot-blooded young artistic men so very certain that the poetry, passion, music in their hearts ought be made into the culture of all - by force if necessary.

The Cabaret is something about being a true human in the world: it’s something about patience, tolerance, regret, sorrow, error and realizing that we are defined by our folly. It’s about having pity and empathy and realizing you’ve broken the Ming urn of civilization and might not live long enough to see its return. It is a poem of tender humility and regret.¹

Lauren and I were exceedingly lucky to catch the most recent revival after its core star swap out: Adam “Glambert” Lambert for Eddie Remayne and Auli’i Cravahlo for Gayle Rankin. The production was top notch and I have nothing but glowing praise for Lambert and his portrayal of that horn-dog imp, the Emcee.

The Theatre

The staging of the current production is novel. True to the speakeasy and high class-low life vibe of actual cabarets, you are directed to enter the theatre around the service entrance. As you pass the recycling and moving pallets, you see the green neon eye. That marks the entrance to The “Kit Kat Club” where the primary action of the story happens. As you enter, you’re given schnapps (a plot element) as you wind through the various stairways.

Within, the hallways and side stages are filled with sideshow performer that skew to the seedy vibe - but make no doubt, these are beautiful and gifted contortionists, musicians, and dancers. They are prodigies of the vulgar art forms.

Once seated, you realize that the stage is effectively a small circle around the stage’s lazy Susan. The “you’re on the inside of the club” staging is continued as you see other theatre goers settled barely feet from the edge of this circular zone. Both before the show and during the intermission, cast-folk wander and mingle the aisles which deepens the “participatory theatre” feeling. It gave me a bit of a déjà vu to another participatory theatre experience Lauren and I saw almost 10 years(!) ago.

As the clock crept ever closer to showtime, one of the musical acts started a klezmer-inspired riff close to the stage. Wheezing and unstable, as if it had had a few shots of schnapps, the melody toddled and even had a humorous riff on the climax of another Kander/Ebb musical, “Chicago,” by taking the motif of “Ohhh I’m no one’s wife / Oh but I love my life” and making it do the hora. The trio finished, bowed, and headed to the exit.

Just as the trio slouched out of the spotlight, the gunshot crack of the snare and the hot white spotlight landed on our Emcee, center-stage, Adam Lambert, who played, mimed, and vamped “Wilkommen” to the hilt. I had a good feeling about the show at that point.

Adam Lambert as the Emcee

The emcee is an interesting role: he really is what the performer brings to it. Based on the film version and the hearsay I’ve heard about the 90s revival, and what I saw a few weeks ago, the real revelation of how the actor interprets the character is how he changes from the first half to the last half.

The iconic originating performance brought Joel Gray as a ventriloquist dummy come to life; he was functionally formal while ribald. And while sexual in his topic and patter, his sexuality really is nowhere to be seen. My read of this is that of the emcee is a product of the Weimar stage and manners, gone seedy. When the second act comes, he’s a staggered witness of how a volk who conceived of themselves as denker und dichter lost all those wonderful Prussian manners to rank barbarity.

This is in contrast to Alan Cumming’s vaunted turn in the 90s where a more muscular pansexuality surfaced in the emcee. Cumming was much more ribald, but if you tested him to put his money where his mouth was, he might just have taken you up on the offer. Additionally, when the sad ending fell in that rendition, Cumming was badged with a pink triangle – a portent of his future as a victim of the death camps. Barely past the nadir of the AIDS crisis, it was an indictment of the comfortable, polite classes that might not mind all-that-much seeing Jews as well as the queer-identifying not be around anymore. And it’s a reminder to the Jewish or gay in the audience: when the chips are down, decent people might not save you. It was an utterly chilling “J’accuse.”

Lambert’s emcee is an emcee of the post-2016 era. This emcee is preening and fawning, pansexual, gender-fluid, playful and downright horny. But his transformation begins much more subtly, secretly, and poisonously. It’s in the first act that Lambert’s gorgeously catastrophic a capella rendition of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” suggests that the open, free culture of which he was a participant and beneficiary might be quickly cast off when expedient. When acting to ingratiate oneself to an authoritarian or fascist he would all-too-willingly capitulate and modulate.

When the horny little imp in the first act ends up being bleach-blonde handsome in the final act in a khaki outfit à la the Hitler youth, we see that yes, he was outré, but those excesses came with no body count. But the movement he now resembles and reflects, with its patriotism and exclusion, will accept bloody purgation of blood poison for blood purity.

Lambert’s singing: a product of reality TV and years spent doing theater in touring companies is honed. His presence on stage is likewise deft and considered. He did a superb job, and I would not be surprised to see him join the annals of those who interpreted the role exceptionally.

Final note: His costume for “Money,” a Nazi field uniform bedazzled with rhinestones was brilliant. The show wasn’t afraid to remind us that there are always industrialists who see a good war as a good way to move up the bottom line. It’s a standout number.

Auli’i Cravahlo as Sally Bowles

In the history of film, there is no movie that’s wrested more tears from my eyes than “Moana.” I cry thinking about some of the songs as sung in the tender, vulnerable, youthful voice of Cravahlo. I was extremely surprised to see that Cravahlo was making her Broadway debut in this material: how would “Moana” follow in the Liza-shaped hole associated with this musical?

The good news, and “Moana” fans knew this, Cravahlo has the pipes to belt like she needs to. In the final exhortation to realize that “it isn’t that long a stay / Life is a cabaret, old friend, and I love a cabaret,” the singer has to belt to the rafters goddammit and Cravahlo fulfilled this expectation beautifully. So I know that she can sing, but the interpretation of the character, I believe, lead her to not sing as often as she could.

I suspect this might have been a directorial choice, but Cravahlo’s performance recalls Natasha Richardson’s interpretation: Sally is a lucky, average-talent gutter-girl who just happened to land in a seedy dive where she can do just about the best she can hope for herself with her moderate gifts. She needs to be a star somewhere, and, in this life, the best she can hope for is the Kit Kat Club. This leads her to have a streak of desperation and brassiness in defending her place in the club. It also suggests that it might be possible for Sally to engage in immoral magical-thinking naivete when useful for helping her preserve her fantasy.² Both Richardson and Cravahlo take this view of the character.

However, the problem in Cravahlo’s delivery, to my mind, is that she would use yelling or gnashing over singing. I get it, it does communicate desperation and defiance, but this dramatic trick was waaayyy overused. We’re in a musical, no? I suspect that this is a place of comfort for her presentation of the character and when she got overwhelmed she ran back to it. To be fair, this was her first time treading the boards. I just don’t think she’d had enough time to inhabit the character and bring some of these choices into her delivery in a more subtle way.

Calvin Leon Smith as Cliff

One of the benefits of diversity efforts in the theatre over the years is that we arrive in a place where we could get Smith as Cliff, a Black Cliff from Harrisburg, PA. This is a really interesting choice given that PA bordered the Confederacy and was also a key state in advancing the causes of abolition (thanks, Friends) and the Underground Railroad (thanks, Friends). So when a Black American in Berlin begins to perceive prejudice and institutional racism, he swings from being extremely calm to being extremely agitated in a way that feels extremely Cassandra-like. On top of this, in the plot, Cliff comes to befriend the smuggler Ernst Ludwig. It was fascinating to see a Black man being the “us” against the “others” i.e. Jews queer-identifying identities.³

The tension between Sally, desperate for validation and fame with her modicum of talent and Cliff, desperate to get the hell away from whatever homicidal Jim Crow was developing all around him was one of the most interesting dramatic opportunities in this particular performance. I wish more had been done with it, but to see it at all was pretty intriguing.

Bebe Neuwirth as Fraulein Schneider and Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz

It’s the tragic love story that serves as a counterpoint to the libidinous license of the Kit Kat club. Hard-working German volk who lived through the horrors of the first war and were determined to live a normal life thereafter – at all costs – fall in love late in life. The why and how this relationship is doomed is revealed in a scene which literally moved the theatre to pin-drop-audibility of quiet. I’ll not speak about those pivotal scenes late before the intermission, but the scenes just before and just after the break are riveting.

There’s nothing to say about Neuwirth: she’s such an experienced performer, she nails the performance by being slightly delusional, slightly desperate and slightly maudlin. Skybell does a great job as Herr Schultz. Sitting with my wife next to me, his praise for marriage and love and the marital condition was really touching. His delivery of the line “I know the German people!” – against all evidence crashing around him like glass from broken windows – still rings in my ears. For while Schultz knew it was possible to believe some things and be a good citizen, we know that those who are about to assume control don’t see it that way and will use dissent to secure their bulwark.

We don’t see Schultz again.

Conclusion

Look, you’re either into this kind of adult, thoughtful, challenging work or you want to see whiz bang (“Cursed Child”) and/or happy village Disney musicals (“Aladdin”, “Lion King”). That said, if you want something more dramatic, your choices are pretty much “Hamilton” and “Cabaret.” I wouldn’t miss this production.

Footnotes

I suppose that’s part of what makes Hamilton remarkable, it has the tone of the former category in its first half, and the latter’s after the entr’acte.
If anything, I think this is where Liza’s interpretation is wrong. Lila doesn’t feel like a gutter-snipe: we know that Liza could land a better gig. She’s just too damn talented. We also know that Liza’s Sally doesn’t have any teeth: she might be awkward, intentionally outrée, but she could just as easily put on a better dress, fix her street vocabulary, and find herself married well.
Yes, yes, but I’m not trying to spoil more than I have to!