Cabaret – The Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre, New York

Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre, New York. Picture: Marc Brenner

Cabaret continues at The Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre, New York.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

In 2021, the 1966 musical classic Cabaret received a blazing revival from director Rebecca Frecknall in London’s West End. The production, co-conceived with the show’s Emcee Eddie Redmayne, received rave reviews, swept the Olivier Awards, and is still running at London’s Kit Kat Club (Playhouse Theatre) today. Now, Frecknall’s Cabaret has arrived on Broadway in a transfer that remains potent and impactful (the show has received nine Tony Award nominations).

Set in Berlin during the waning years of the Weimar Republic, Cabaret introduces the audience to a world of hedonistic self-expression set against the rise of the Third Reich. The production leans into this contrast, presenting a saccharine, sexually charged Kit Kat Club in Act I which tumbles swiftly into an oppressive grey conformity in Act II.

The most novel part of the production begins before you even set foot in the August Wilson Theatre. Instead of using its traditional entrance, a long corridor dimly lit in neon green guides audience members around to the back of the building and down into the bowels of the theatre. There you are greeted with a ‘Prologue’ performance of musicians, dancers, and drinks that evoke the essence of the musical before the lights hit the stage. It’s immersive, alluring and a brilliant primer for the show to come.

The Broadway transfer retains the creative brilliance of its original West End revival. It’s easy to see why Redmayne has been so celebrated in this role. He’s completely in his element as the shape-shifting Emcee, morphing himself from a playful, serpentine club host to a morose, Aryan shadow. His transformation between Act I’s ‘Willkommen’ and Act II’s ‘I Don’t Care Much’ is so great that he becomes almost unrecognisable – it’s a striking embodiment of the musical’s central message.

Gayle Rankin lacks some of the refinement and nuance that the West End’s original Jessie Buckley brought to Sally Bowles, but she still gives a powerful performance, particularly in her earlier numbers. Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell’s relationship as Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz is heartwarming and beautiful, and once severed, Neuwirth’s resigned sorrow and Skybell’s ill-fated optimism are doubly heartbreaking.

The choreography, from Julia Cheng, is exceptional. The movement in the Kit Kat Club is wild and eclectic – it tantalises and entices. And yet from the very start, the shape of the swastika is laced into the Emcee’s welcome, flashing in and out of the dancing. Blink and you’ll miss it, but it’s a startling glimpse of what’s to come. Tom Scutt’s costumes achieve this effect too. Beginning as a diverse range of weird and wonderful items, they morph over time: wigs are removed and clothing changed until all colour and difference are gone. All of this is a testament to Frecknall’s excellent use of foreshadowing (look out here for the haunting abstraction and eventual resolution in ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’).

However, while the show has no doubt transferred many of its strengths to Broadway, it’s also exacerbated one of its core issues. Given that there is a whole song in Kander and Ebb’s timeless score devoted to the problem of money, there’s an inescapable irony in this production’s ticket prices. You’ll be hard-pressed to find tickets below $100 this summer — orchestra seats don’t go below $229, and for the best seats in the house, with cabaret-style tables and a dining experience, prices go as high as $776 with fees.

Scutt’s new design for the reimagined August Wilson Theatre has unfortunately added to this problem. While the best seats are locked into dining options and completely inaccessible to most theatregoers, the less expensive ones are significantly further from the stage than in London’s Playhouse Theatre. The result is that the immersive, interactive elements that make this show so unique are diminished.

This is a big problem for any musical, but especially such a creatively strong production. It renders the show, to an even greater extent than the original, a financially exclusive experience. A glitzy golden revolving eye in the centre of the theatre reinforces this — it’s as if Scutt and the creative team are actually leaning into this exclusivity.

As an experience, this is undoubtedly a five-star production – but only if you can afford to see it. It is still an innovative, perhaps even defining take on one of the great works of musical theatre. Don’t expect the Cabaret to be over any time soon.

Billy Nicholles