Cabaret continues at the English Theatre in Frankfurt until 20 March 2019.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
After more daring choices in the past few years of lesser done musicals such as The Life and Jekyll & Hyde, the English Theatre in Frankfurt has decided to revisit a classic musical, but happily for us one that has been in constant evolution since Harold Prince’s groundbreaking production in 1966.
With each new version, directors have been sharpening and sometimes refocusing productions of Cabaretto reflect changes in society and it is true that in today’s darkening times the themes underlying this masterpiece still remain frighteningly resonant.
Kander and Ebb’s Kurt Weill-flavoured immortal score—one must remember that Weill’s wife Lotte Lenya played Fräulein Schneider in the original—has also been in perpetual development.
Such key numbers as ‘Telephone Song’, the cue of which we actually hear in this production, have been cut in favour of the songs made famous by the movie: ‘Mein Herr’ (replacing ‘Don’t Tell Mama’, but awkwardly juxtaposed), ‘Money, Money’, and ‘Maybe This Time’ (the song most closely associated with Sally Bowles even though it was originally just written for one of Liza Minnelli’s albums and not at all for the show or the movie.).
The character of Cliff, based on Christopher Isherwood, author of the novel itself, and sensitively played by Ryan Saunders – who goes from a closet gay in the original to a bisexual with the different name of Brian in the movie to openly gay in the most recent version – has become, with the cutting of his great solo ‘Why Should I Wake Up?’, an almost non-singing character apart from the ‘Perfectly Marvellous’ duet and a brief participation in the finale.
Ever since the Broadway revival in 1987, the shift to the Emcee as the central character of the piece has only become more cemented, especially due to the highly successful Sam Mendes Broadway revival at the Donmar in London, which thankfully brought back the climatic ‘I Don’t Care Much’ (often done in drag but not here).
Greg Castiglioni, recently stealing the show as Count Fosco in the first revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Woman in White at the Charing Cross Theatre, provides a butcher and less flamboyant but nonetheless brilliant variation of the multi-layered character.
As Sally Bowles, Helen Reuben brings back the character’s Englishness, and her more restrained voice (reminiscent of Judi Dench, who played the part first in London) leads to a more emotional rendition of the title song than usual.
She is revealingly true to the character, in stark contrast to Minnelli, whose strong, at-the-top-of-her-game vocals made her initially miscast in a part she ultimately made her own (Minnelli was rejected by Hal Prince for the original Broadway production!).
Sarah Shelton and Richard Derrington also work wonders with their acting in the originally central parts of the older couple of Fraulein Schneider and her Jewish boyfriend Herr Schultz, both absent from the movie, which replaced them both with a baroness and a gigolo, other characters taken from the Isherwood novel.
Matt Blaker is also remarkable as Ernst, as is Lindsay Goodhand in the role of Fraulein Kost. The ensemble members who play the boys and girls of the Kit Kat Club, all of whom now take on feature parts, are equally West End calibre.
Tom Littler, artistic director of London’s Jermyn Street Theatre, and choreographer Cydney Uffindell-Phillips do as masterful a job with this revisiting of Cabaret as they did with Jekyll & Hyde, helped by the musical direction of Mal Hall, the inventive costume and set designs by Simon Kenny, and the climatic lighting by Richard G. Jones.
The Sam Mendes and Rufus Norris versions may have each gone further in provocation and nudity, especially in their final bone-chilling depictions of the gas chamber, but this no less politically engaged production strikes its own path by turning the cabaret songs into book songs.
By setting the opening number at the station, with the characters gradually stripping their street clothes into cabaret attire, this brilliant production offers a new alternative. As opposed to the movie, which completely got rid of the book songs, this production uses only the cabaret ones for commentary on the action. The new twist here is to have reversed the process by turning those numbers into book songs that comment on the cabaret itself.
A first rate, not-to-be-missed production entirely made up of British cast and creatives, if you visit Frankfurt before 20 March.
Patrick Honoré
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