Review: Weber State’s ‘Cabaret’

TheatreARTBEAT, By Caril Jennings

“Cabaret”
based on the play by John Van Druten from stories by Christopher Isherwood.
Book by Joe Masteroff. Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb.
Directed by Andrew Barratt Lewis. Music directed by Kenneth Plain.
Choreographed by Michael Hernandez.

Performances: April 3-4, April 8-11
Location: Eccles Theatre, Weber State University, Browning Center for the Performing Arts

Press photo of Brian Shinohara. David Daniels

REVIEW

Trigger warnings: This production includes strong sexuality, profanity, drug use, violence, abortion, hate speech. You name it, it’s in the script.

I’ll cut to the chase on the story. Cliff follows his boyfriend to 1930s Berlin, ostensibly to write a novel. He meets Sally Bowles, who ends up being the name of one of the stories he will eventually write. This is the story, filled with all the other people he meets and will write about, including his landlady, Fraulein Schneider.

Every time I have seen this play I have noticed something more clearly. In this production, Fraulein Schneider gives the character the dignity and strength she deserves. I have never paid so much attention to her, as in previous productions she’s portrayed as fragile and delicate and faded. Not here. This is an older woman with a clear understanding of what is going on in the world. She is sharp, not soft. She is paying attention. And, you pay attention to her because you can hear and understand everything she is saying.

Contrast that to the antihero, Sallie Bowles. She has no connection to reality. She thinks she is a success because she sings in a rundown lesbian bar, when her real talent is her availability to whatever debauchery offered at the Kit Kat Klub, where “everything is beautiful.” Or so the Emcee says. (I would note that while Sally is only supposed to have marginal talent, Grace Maria Hernandez has a terrific voice and excellent delivery.)

The Emcee was new to me, also. He seemed to me to have an elegance in his “grotesquery,” an aura of fragile refinery, a lovely fashion-model precision. This was in between bouts of appropriate male sex-worker vulgarity for a sleazy dive. His expressions of gender-oriented behaviors seemed pretty equal — and he did it in heels, frequently backwards. He was definitely more human than I have seen him before. Once again, his voice and movements were often more beautiful than expected.

The Kit Kat Ensemble (who also play many other parts) was a pleasure to watch in their song and dance numbers. There’s a great scenic surprise that happened to me on one of their showstoppers, “Money (Makes the World Go Around).” Kudos for the delight I experienced, just as if I was seeing theatre magic for the first time. Also, the Kit Kat Dancers costumes were individually entertaining.

The expensive and overpowering scenery is all for show, moved to the background, only to express faded glory, if not downright decay. The stage decorations on the outside of the proscenium were no more than forgotten ruins. The distasteful red and gold are reflections to what we see not only on stage but out in the political world.

My only desire was to see the musicians better. They were in the dark in the back corners of the stage. I would like to have seen them elevated so I could see them in their glittery costumes!

And that, my friends, is the point of this play. There is always something to pay attention to. There is always a tyrant threat, and tyrants prey on those on the margins: immigrants, sexual “deviants,” Gypsies, Jews, so many categories we are stampeded into naming and persecuting.

Everyone working at the Kit Kat Klub is there to find shelter, safety and acceptance in numbers. Denial. Complacency. Inertia. They are all driven to the point where they are easy targets. And we know that they were the first to go in the Nazi regime during HItler.

Knowing what happens next is the unwritten part of this play that you, the audience, brings along with you. This is where theatre becomes a “vehicle for social commentary” and societal change.

A note: I attended the final dress rehearsal. When we arrived at the Browning Center there were several emergency vehicles. A gurney was being unloaded and rolled into the back stage entrance. Curtain was delayed 15 minutes. In that time, the injured dancer was taken to hospital as a precaution, and an understudy quickly learned the injured actor’s part and made appropriate costume changes. (The last I heard the actor checked out okay.) As an audience member, I could not tell who the last minute stand-in was. That’s bravery and talent under fire. Kudos to those winning actors, working together to make a sticky situation look good on stage!