October 31, 2022
By Avery Saad
*contains spoilers*
Fra Fee and the Cabaret Ensemble; Photo: Marc Brenner
“A period of ecstasy, sentimentality, worry, hope and clock-watching” is how Christopher Isewood (original novelist) described Berlin during the late 1920’s. Rebecca Frecknall’s Cabaret managed to convey this perfectly. This production was filled with flamboyant and indulgent ecstasy, extreme ends of sentimentality, ignorant bliss, purposeful avoidance of worry, and clock-watching by both the audience and every single member of the cast.
Frecknall started the experience of the Kit Kat Club (formally known as the Playhouse Theatre) almost immediately as the audience entered into the world of late 1920’s Berlin at the Kit Kat Club. There’s champagne, cocktails, and peach schnapps–lots of peach schnapps. Every single detail is completely curated in such a meticulous manner. There is even a pre-show atop one of the bars in the theatre–the Gold Bar–as a welcome into the world of Cabaret. Once the pre-show is over, the audience can slowly make their way into the fully transformed performance space of the Kit Kat Club (the stage), and wait for the Emcee to pop onto the stage, and begin the show.
Cabaret’s Emcee is haunted by both Joel Grey and Alan Cumming–two extremely iconic performers. Grey originated the role: acted creepy in mannerisms, and mocked Hitler’s mustache and the Nazi Salute; and Cumming then raised the standard: an explicitly queer character who ended the musical in concentration camp pajamas with a yellow star and
upside down pink triangle on his shirt. Yet, Fra Fee’s Emcee was a new life to an old character and one of the best performances I have had the privilege of seeing, completely transformed what I had previously known to be the character. The actor’s physicality was that of a clown, or a circus performer, which blended with the show’s message of frivolity as a purposeful distraction. Even compared to his predecessor Eddie Redmayne, who originated the role for this new production, Fee stood out: “[Fee’s EmCee] offers a warmer singing voice mixed with a desire to make sure everyone in the audience [felt] thoroughly welcome at least at the show’s beginning in this real-life Kit Kat Club.” His playfulness contrasted Amy Lennox’s desperate Sally Bowles. Lennox’s performance of the titular song was an expression of raw emotion that brought new anguish to the lyrics. Through the carelessness and screaming of the song, the audience was completely enraptured by her performance. Lennox also played up Sally’s complete dismissal of growing up and lack of responsibility, adding to the slow-building, mournful tone of the production. And I can’t mention Amy Lennox and Fra Fee without mentioning the production’s Clifford Bradshaw–Omar Baroud. Baroud’s Cliff was a sensitive, loving escapist; all while he explored Cliff’s sexuality in such an exposed manner. There was a sensuality that floated around him, the tension between Cliff and Bobby or the love felt between Cliff and Sally, Omar Baroud weaved his way through every moment in perfection. Every single member of the cast, whether they be ensemble or named, blended together and worked to create perfect moments continuously throughout the show. All of the movement was fluid, yet still nodded to the film choreographer Bob Fosse. Aesthetically, this show hit every mark from costumes to lighting to the stage to sound: every piece fit together to create the gorgeous puzzle that was Cabaret.
Cabaret has always been an openly queer show–an idea introduced to the audience in the show's opening number. However, this production was extremely queer, in ways that Broadway, and West End productions hadn’t seen before. Cumming’s version of the Emcee was queer in dress and ended the production with the symbolic upside down pink triangle on his shirt, and both Joel Grey and Alan Cumming are openly queer men. Eddie Redmayne is not a queer actor, so when Fra Fee stepped in for Redmayne, there was a return to a queerness that had been lost by Redmayne. Another reviewer, Jay Darcy, wrote about Frecknall’s production as well: “This production is unashamedly queer – indeed, venues like the Kit Kat Club were often a sanctuary for those society would deem sexual deviants – and whilst Fra Fee’s Emcee is as straight as a bendy ruler, that additional line signals the unashamed homoeroticism that is yet to come. Then again, perhaps Emcee pretending to be straight (and hiding his sexuality) is part of the joke” But Fra Fee’s Emcee was not what cultivated the true queer motifs throughout the show, it was Baroud’s Clifford Bradshaw. Frecknall’s version of Cliff was something that I usually do not see in productions, but deserved the stage time. The audience was shown multiple types of love queer through Cliff: both lust between Bobby and Cliff, and then (albeit twisted) romantic love between Cliff and Sally. Sally is consistently jealousy of the attachment between the two men–a scene that had been changed throughout the year from suggesting a queerness in Cliff to showing a queerness in Cliff. Frecknall added a kiss between Cliff and Bobby as physical, undeniable evidence of this queerness. Frecknall replaces repression of the Nazi’s with representation of the groups Hitler and the Third Reich were repressing.
Unlike previous, large-scale productions–most recent and notable being the National Tour of Cabaret in the United States–, the Emcee and the rest of the cast are not backed up by an audience-jarring Nazi Flag the size of the stage, or a plethora of swastikas all across costumes. There were a total of two, small, swastikas on the stage during the entirety of the show. This production skipped over the performative aspect of the Third Reich and showed the audience another message: behind all of that showmanship were people. This production forced the audience to see the conformity of the people who were willing to villainize the countless communities during the reign of the Third Reich. Behind all of the flags and symbols and parades, it was just people. There are repeated actions by multiple characters of choosing to conform instead of fighting against (or even acknowledging, in Sally Bowles case) what they know is wrong. During Fra Fee’s hauntingly beautiful rendition of ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, members of the ensemble place little wooden dolls onto the turntable almost as a display of the performance of the Nazi party. The dolls took away a sense of people, and commented on the humanity many people in Berlin were lacking when it came to the Third Reich. This imagery of lifeless, wooden dolls on the turntable comes back to haunt the audience during the finale, as all of the cast come out in the same blond haircuts, with the same gray suits– the dolls have now become real, flesh-and-blood people. No longer is the audience allowed to see the Nazi party as a harmless performance, but instead forced to see the people–forced to see the humanity in the people who conformed.
The audience is given the same passive view that is shown in Sally. Sally is constantly ignoring what is going on in the real world; she parties and sleeps around to her heart's content. However, when Sally has her big moment of recognition and realization, she decides to do nothing about it, whereas the audience is forced to see the consequences of the passive actions of Sally Bowles, and countless others represented in her.
Cabaret is a musical that has always stood out; its composition, content, and structure were unusual during the 1960’s. The content is about a queer club, in Berlin, right on the cusp of Nazi occupation, and despite its survivalist feel, it still has a slightly optimistic feel to it. Jeff Sparito, from The Take, describes why the show is still so applicable today: “The way Cabaret addresses Nazism is through subtlety and inference, which allows us to easily compare the themes against today’s political issues”. Frecknall minimized the comparison of the Nazi’s showmanship with the Kit Kat Club's Showmanship, and brought out the subtly.
After seeing Cabaret, it has plagued my mind ever since, and I find myself finding more and more reasons to go back. The show wants for the audience to come back; it’s written into the titular song: “Life is a cabaret old chum/Come to the Cabaret”, and as for me, I made my mind up back in September, and when I go, I’ll enjoy it even more than before.
Comments