‘Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome! Come To The Cabaret!’ That’s what Parisians who love musicals are doing for the next two months as for the first time they get a taste of the Kander and Ebb classic in its original language.
The French, who didn’t use to favour Broadway musicals, now turn out in droves to see them and with Cabaret playing at the new Lido2 Theatre on the Champs-Elysees and 42nd Street paying an eagerly-awaited return visit to the Theatre du Chatelet down by the Seine, they have two Broadway musicals to choose from over the festive period. And you don’t have to pay London Kit Kat Club prices for a ticket!
Fair enough, you don’t get Eddie Redmayne either at this Cabaret where the best-known cast name is Sally Ann Triplett as boarding house proprietress Fraulein Schneider. Best known for TV talent show The Voice, Sam Buttery gets his big chance and some outrageous costumes as the Emcee, Lizzy Connolly plays Sally Bowles, the part for which Liza Minnelli won an Oscar, Oliver Dench is penniless American writer Cliff Bradshaw and Gary Milner plays ageing suitor Herr Schultz.
In other supporting roles, Ciarán Owens is sinister Nazi agent Herr Ludwig and Geordie actress Charlie Martin has randy sailors to deal with as the tireless Fraulein Kost.
Jean-Luc Choplin, formerly artistic director at the Chatelet and Marigny theatres, has taken over the reins at the old Lido, the famous but now-closed Parisian nightspot where showbusiness greats from Piaf to Dietrich and Chevalier to Elton John have headlined over the decades, and has gone back to Canadian opera director Robert Carsen to helm Cabaret for the Lido’s debut as a home for musical theatre.
The show, with Bob Broad as musical director and choreography by Fabian Aloise, opened last week and the word so far is that “it’s a huge success”. Musical Theatre Review will be giving its own verdict shortly.
[Clockwise]: Sam Buttery and members of the cast, Lizzy Connolly and Oliver Dench, Lizzy Connolly and ensemble, Gary Milner and Sally Ann Triplett in Cabaret at the Lido2, Paris. Pictures: Julien Benhamou
Both current shows are in English with French surtitles although the songs themselves are so familiar to French audiences that translations either side of the stage are often ignored.
Paris has seen Cabaret before, 11 years ago at the Marigny, but although that was directed by Sam Mendes, cast and text were French.
And now comes news that Paris is to see the legendary Bernstein-Sondheim-Laurents-Robbins musical West Side Story again, for the fourth time since 2007. American actor Lonny Price is reported to be bringing a new vision of it to the Chatelet next October for a nine-week run.
Meanwhile, what good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play, life is a cabaret, old chum, come to the cabaret. It’s at Lido2 until 3 February 2023 while the Stephen Mear-directed-and-choreographed 42nd Street opens at the Chatelet on 7 December and runs to 14 January 2023.
Jeremy Chapman
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