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"Cabaret" Features Delights, Decadence of '30's Germany, As Intime and Princeton U. Players Stage 1966 Hit Musical
Donald Gilpin
Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome! ... In here life is beautiful!"
"What good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play. Life is a cabaret, old friend. Come to the cabaret!"
The cabaret, as depicted on stage at Murray Dodge Theater where Theatre Intime and Princeton University Players are presenting the 1966 Kander and Ebb hit musical Cabaret, is a metaphor for life in general and 1930's Berlin in particular. But the life revealed here is full of paradox and ambiguity. It's full of irresistible delights and unrestrained decadence, of singing and dancing and wild romance, but violence and destruction are lurking, ominous foreshadowings of the horrors to come and the Nazis waiting in the wings.
Cabaret originally starred Joel Grey (as the Emcee) on Broadway in 1966, where it won the Tony Award for best musical and ran for 1165 performances. Mr. Grey was featured again in a 1987 revival and with Liza Minnelli in the 1972 film version directed by Bob Fosse. Cabaret confirmed its extraordinary appeal and timelessness in 1998 in yet another successful Broadway revival, directed by Sam Mendes and starring Alan Cumming and Natasha Richardson.
With both style and substance, memorable numbers by John Kander, clever lyrics by Fred Ebb, dynamic dance routines and a darkly engaging, thought-provoking plot, this Cabaret is captivating, dazzling, and troubling, as a high-powered undergraduate Intime/PUP ensemble of 20, directed by junior Jessica Bonney and senior Rachael Timinsky, presents an exciting evening of theater.
So many moments in the production evoke the disturbingly mixed emotional resonance of this show and prompt a similarly complex response from the audience. The three main characters repeatedly find themselves embroiled in the paradoxes of this wildly festive party that is doomed to end tragically.
As the androgynous Emcee of the Kit Kat Club, the multi-talented, chameleon-like Brenden Jacobs-Jenkins first welcomes the audience and introduces the alluring world of the cabaret. It's a world, as he and the Kit Kat Girls and Boys demonstrate, where anything goes ‹ socially and sexually, at least, if not politically. Mr. Jacobs-Jenkins is fascinating to watch in this athletic performance. He permeates the aisles of the theater, as well as all corners of the stage. Dancer, singer, and a superb actor, he evokes just the right blend of appeal, sympathy, and revulsion. He is especially powerful in Two Ladies, a scandalous ménage a trois number with Nadia Ben-Youssef and Preston Burger; in If You Could See Her, a pas de deux with the extraordinarily graceful Ashley Boizelle in gorilla attire; and in his grim second-act solo, I Don't Care Much.
Suzanna Sanchez, as the irrepressible, irresistible Sally Bowles, hapless Kit Kat Klub chanteuse from England, creates another intriguingly paradoxical character. In her case, her life ‹ her love life in particular ‹ inside and outside the cabaret provides much of the plot of this show. Ms. Sanchez does not manage to sustain a credible British accent, but she does successfully capture the spirited amorality and zest for life of this character, an oddly naïve young woman that the protagonist Cliff Bradshaw (Jed Peterson), as well as the audience, cannot help but fall in love with, despite her promiscuity and lack of political or moral scruples. Ms. Sanchez shines in several numbers, including Don't Tell Mama with the Kit Kat Girls, Perfectly Marvelous with Cliff, and a powerful rendition of the show-stopping Cabaret near the end of the last act.
The character of the American writer Cliff, who comes to Berlin to write his novel, is modeled after Christopher Isherwood, whose Berlin Stories (1937) was dramatized in John van Druten's I Am a Camera (1952), which provided the basis for Joe Masteroff's book for Cabaret. Mr. Peterson's Cliff, whose arrival on the Paris-Berlin train in the first scene and departure for home at the end of the show frame the action of the plot, is consistently convincing as the young American abroad, though somewhat less dependable vocally on a solo number and a duet with Sally. Cliff's mixed feelings about this city of rich pleasures and depravity and his increasing despair in the face of the social deterioration and corruption are expressed in his comments soon after arriving: "This town is so tacky and terrible and everybody is having so much fun!" And later, after a violent confrontation with young Nazis: "The party in Berlin is over."
A major subplot here, providing rich contrast with the romance of Cliff and Sally, features an elderly spinster, Fraulein Schneider (Amy Coenen), and her Jewish suitor, a widower and fruit seller, Herr Schultz (Alex Fiorentino). Both Ms. Coenen and Mr. Fiorentino are capable performers, but the challenges of the age stretch and the difficulty of competing with the dazzling Kit Kat Klub scenes are daunting. Although at times their scenes seem to have gathered the dust of a musical of another era, the struggles of Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz to nurture their romance amidst the dangerous politics of pre-war Germany are undeniably moving. More engaging and dynamic are the shenanigans of Fraulein Kost (Danielle Ivory), one of Cliff's neighbors, who "entertains" a varied assortment of young sailors for fun and profit. Ms. Ivory does excellent character work as the outspoken, calculating and lascivious Fraulein, and has also provided the evening's skillfully raunchy and spirited choreography, so energetic and so finely trimmed to fit the confinements of the Murray Theater stage.
Further expert support is provided by Ben Rice-Townsend as Cliff's German friend who turns brutal in revealing his Nazi sympathies; Josh Goldsmith, who leads the Kit Kat Boys in the eerily beautiful Nazi anthem Tomorrow Belongs to Me; and the other superbly risqué Kit Kat performers: Ms. Boizelle, Ronee Penoi, Emma Worth, Ms. Ben-Youssef, Marisol Rosa-Shapiro, Lisa Curry, Leonore Carlson, Liz Berg, David Gilbert, Preston Burger, Charles Clarkson and Dan Kublick. Rebecca Simson's set design, with lighting by Scott Grzenczyk and Ed Davisson, successfully displays the Kit Kat Klub on the main part of the stage and stage left, with the downstage right area representing the boardinghouse room Cliff shares with Sally. This set involves a major building project with a seven-foot high upstage platform for the five-piece orchestra and its conductor Rodrigo Vega, three doors upstage center, used for the cabaret and for boardinghouse entrances and a long staircase for frequent entrances down from the orchestra platform to stage left.
Mr. Vega, who is also music director, conducts with authority and keeps the capable orchestra on cue, throughout a wide variety of music. Also working overtime here is costume designer Lauren Palmer, who seems to have raided Victoria's Secret for an unlimited supply of risqué undergarments for the Kit Kat Girls and an appropriate array of tuxedo parts for their counterparts, the Kit Kat Boys.
Ms. Bonney and Ms. Timinsky move the show along smoothly at an appropriately brisk pace, and bring all elements of the ensemble and production together effectively. There were opening-night delays with one or two scene changes, a technical glitch or two and an occasional imbalance in volume levels that made characters inaudible, but these problems should be easily corrected by the second weekend.
Entract, a production number curtain-raiser for the second of two acts reveals just how effectively Intime and PUP, with some help from Kander and Ebb, are able to re-create the world of Cabaret, a world about to be overtaken by the tyranny and violence of Nazism. The number begins in a typically spirited manner, lifted by the buoyant cabaret music of the Kit Kat Klub Band and the vigorous, sensual choreography of the Emcee and his Kit Kat Girls and Boys weaving in and out and changing partners rapidly. But suddenly the tone changes. The swastikas come out. The erotic dance steps turn to jack-booted goose steps and the arms rise in a "Heil, Hitler" salute, as the performers don artificial expressions of enthusiasm to march off stage right. It's a chilling moment, to be echoed again at the final curtain, and a shocking wake-up call for anyone who thought the party would last forever.
As Clifford, writing in his journal and looking back, describes, "It was the end of the world and I was dancing with Sally Bowles and we were both asleep."
Cabaret, produced by Theatre Intime and Princeton University Players, will play for just one more weekend, at the Hamilton Murray Theater on the Princeton University campus, with performances Thursday and Friday, April 22 and 23, at 8 pm and on Saturday April 24 at 2 pm and 8 pm. Call (609) 258-1742 for tickets, and visit www.theatreintime.org on the web for further information.
