Reviewed by James
Karas
For the big musical of this year’s Shaw Festival, Artistic Director
Jackie Maxwell has chosen Cabaret,
the 1966 musical about the coming of the Nazis in Germany. It is a bold choice
boldly executed.
The musical has gone through numerous productions and transformations
but Maxwell has chosen the 1998 Broadway revival directed originally by Sam
Mendes and co-directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall. The Shaw Festival
production is ably directed by Peter Hinton.
When the play opens we see several iron staircases converging into a
tower on a revolving stage. It could be the Tower of Babel (the Emcee makes a
pint of singing in several languages) or the tower of evil and depravity.
The tower with its landings and lit beams serves as the tawdry Kit Kat
Club, the slummy boarding house run by Fraulein Schneider and other incidental
locales. The back of the stage is dark and spotlights are directed on the
actors. It is a grim, dingy and scary world. In the second half a rock is
tossed through the window of a fruit store operated by Herr Schultz, a Jew, and
there is a burst of light at the back of the stage. After that red lights dominate
the rear stage and a swastika hangs prominently on the wall. Hell has arrived.
The physical representation of Berlin in 1930 is of course matched by
the people who inhabit it. On the political side we see the rise of the Nazis
and anti-Semitism including a severe beating of the central character, Cliff,
the prohibition of a marriage between a German and a Jew and the hint of the
horrors to come.
On the personal level, the world of Berlin, with some exceptions, is one
of depravity, seediness, violence and ugliness.
The moral centre is held by Cliff Bradshaw (Gray Powell), an American
writer who has come to Berlin to write a novel. He unwittingly helps the Nazis,
falls in love with Sally (Deborah Hay), an English woman who sings at the Kit
Kat Cub and moonlights as a prostitute. Cliff is bisexual but his love for
Sally is genuine. She becomes pregnant but does not know who the father is. He
is bludgeoned by the Nazis and leaves Germany but does write his novel.
Herr Schultz (Benedict Campbell), the decent fruit vendor, is not so
lucky. He is an optimist and thinks that the situation will blow over. Fraulein
Schneider (Corrine Koslo) will not marry him – all her friends are Nazis!
The basic plots of Cabaret derive from the stories of
Christopher Isherwood which were adapted into a play called I Am A Camera by John van Druten.
Joe Masteroff wrote the book based on the play and John Kander composed the
music to lyrics by Fred Ebb.
The music, of course, is what takes Cabaret away from being just
another story about politics, love and depravity in Weimar Berlin or any other
place. The dark, tense, edgy, blunt music creates a claustrophobic atmosphere
full of terror, evil and ugliness. From the first appearance of the Emcee (Juan
Chioran) with his painted face and spiked hair, singing “Willkommen” to the
depraved lives of the characters, Cabaret gave me the feeling of people
living as if the end of the world is imminent; the Titanic had struck the iceberg
and is about to sink.
Supreme irony is reached when we hear “Tomorrow belongs to me” that starts
with a folksy melody and bucolic lyrics about the sun in the meadow and the
stag in the forest. It ends by asking for a sign from the Fatherland. The sign
that it beckons is the swastika and the future belongs to the Nazi nightmare.
I have spoken mostly about the Mendes-Marshall conception of this great
musical as executed by the Shaw Festival under the direction of Hinton. The
musical direction is by Paul Sportelli and the set is designed by Michael
Gianfrancesco.
Without taking anything from the individual performers, I think the
whole is more important than the parts in this instance.. Chioran is animated,
seedy and excellent – just what you would expect from an Emcee. Gray Powell and
Benedict Campbell are almost the straight men in this collection of reprobates
and they are good at it. Excellent performances by Deborah Hay and Corrine
Koslo.
Go see it.
______
Cabaret by Joe Masteroff (book), John Kander (music),
Fred Ebb (lyrics), continues until
October 18, 2014 at the Royal George Theatre,
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.
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