Cabaret's 'Cabaret': song and dance for doomsday

COURTESY YALE CABARET The Yale Cabaret gives you a break with the Kit Kat Club.

Before stepping into his role as the traveling American writer Clifford Bradshaw, actor Remy-Luc Auberjonois, DRA '01, of the Yale Cabaret proclaims: "There was a Cabaret and there was a Master of Ceremonies in a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world."

Welcome to the apocalypse. Your tour guide for the evening is a rascal with a chalky face, a red garish grin, and an oh-so-seductive androgynous physique. Strutting on stage in black pants and a low-cut top, this Emcee of the "Kit Kat Club" (Dara S. Fisher, DRA '01) will introduce you to the basest and most bestial of Berlin circa 1929—a "close-knit" group of performers who deal in leather shorts, fishnet stockings and decadent threesomes. You can't get much closer to the action than this: the audience is seated at tables in the Cabaret itself, sipping tea—courtesy of your mandatory $3 drink admittance fee—and snacking on refreshments (on weekends a full dinner is available).

The audience creates its own atmosphere, murmuring in conversation while the band plays onstage. Overhead lights are dimmed and the old colored bulbs outlining the nightclub stage glare like a New Jersey Christmas display. "It's so tacky and terrible and everybody's having such a great time," is how Bradshaw describes Berlin. However, while for the moment this Cabaret appears to be a musical of leering jokes and decadent diversions, the sinister omen of a rising Nazi regime marches close behind.

The show opens with the arrival of "Cliff" Bradshaw (Auberjonois), an adventurous writer from Pennsylvania who has come to Berlin for inspiration and some cheap, kinky fun. His character is named for Christopher Brad-shaw Isherwood, a poor young Englishman who lived in Berlin and wrote the story of Sally Bowles, a sweet but reckless woman who walks on the edge while the Nazis maneuver for power.

As the ever-lovely Kit Kat performer Sally Bowles, Kathryn Hahn, DRA '01, is striking. Her face shadowed between a microphone light and back spotlight, she throws her head back to belt long notes, stretching her palms outward toward the audience. With a flip of her hair and a shift in her eyes, she throws impish character into her voice. "Mama thinks I'm in a convent," Hahn winks in her first num-ber. "If you've seen my mommy, mum's the word!"

While Cliff and Sally hit it off, Jewish greengrocer Herr Schultz (Nicholas Pepper, DRA '01) woos innkeeper Fraulein Schneider (Lael Logan, DRA '00). Set against the salty sinners of the Kit Kat, Schultz and Schneider are refreshingly average. Logan's voice is sweet but without much expression—her intonations are about as plain as her dull frock and olive sweater. Pepper, dressed neatly in a sweater-vest and tie, is believable as the earnest, righteous Herr. Conflict quickly arises when Frau-lein Schneider must choose between the sanctity of Nazi approval and a proposed marriage with Schultz, who is shunned as a Jew. "What would you do if you were me?" she sings to Cliff in despair.

There is an interesting reference to this conundrum in a later scene, in which the Emcee stalks through the audience with a gorilla. While caressing the animal, which is adorned in lipstick and sparkly earrings, the Emcee attempts to explain the attraction of his hairy companion. "If you could see her through my eyes," the song implores. Although people might stare, the Emcee sings that there are plenty of reasons to love this gorilla. Why not just "live and let live?" However, the Emcee's final line, "If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all," twists the song into sudden cruelty.

Although this is a bizarre way of making a point about prejudice, it does point out a certain similarity in the plight of sexual eccentrics at the Kit Kat and that of Jews in Germany. Both groups are shunned by the rest of German society, but this doesn't stop Kit Kat performers like Fraulein Kost (Regina Bain, DRA '01) from embracing anti-Semitism.

When Nazis begin to emerge among friends, Cliff soon realizes that "the party in Berlin is over." Director Will Frears, DRA '01, adeptly manages the show's transition from its lighter early scenes to its later, darker material. He also effectively manages the Cabaret's space, achieving smooth scene changes and actively using both the small Kit Kat stage with its center microphone and wide aisle running through the audience tables. Although views of the stage can be very limited, the actors compensate, frequently moving to the center aisle where they can be clearly seen from any position in the audience.

You won't want to miss a single minute with any of these characters—as Sally invites, "Life is a Cabaret, old chum—come to the Cabaret!" Yet in the end, what sticks in the memory and belies Sally's enthusiasm is the haunting echo of Cliff's words: "It was the end of the world. I was dancing with Sally Bowles and we were both fast asleep..."

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