Cabaret: Come for the Pre-Show, and Oh, There's Also the Musical

Theatergoers are advised to arrive at least an hour early to experience the "Prologue," featuring nine dancers and musicians performing in three spaces — dubbed the "Vault Bar," "Green Bar," and "Red Bar" — located in the theater's dressed-up lobbies. To get there, you don't go through the main entrance, but rather an alley, after which your phone is affixed with a sticker over the camera lens and you're handed a shot of schnapps. It's all so decadent, darling.

It's designed to get you into the mood for the familiar musical featuring a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb and a book by Joe Masteroff, and it's certainly impressive. It doesn't really have much to do with the actual show, mind you, with the acts and atmosphere less redolent of Weimar-era Germany than a Lower East Side, retro-style burlesque show. And the irony is that it ultimately feels unnecessary, as the production directed by Rebecca Frecknall more than stands up on its own.

[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo's ★★★★☆ review here.]

The disorientation is further amplified upon entering the theater, which has had many of its seats ripped out and replaced by cabaret-style tables. The playing area, surrounded by the audience on all sides, is a large circular platform through which the performers are occasionally given the opportunity to pop up like jacks in the box. Or, to descend, as if to the bowels of hell.

This is not your parents' Cabaret, but it is akin to the Sam Mendes production that took London and Broadway by storm several decades ago. At this point, the musical may never be presented in a traditional proscenium theater again. After all, what would be the fun in that?

As for the show itself (I know, it almost seems like an afterthought), it has been given an undeniably powerful if somewhat imperfect staging. Among its chief strengths are its lead performances, or at least most of them, with Eddie Redmayne repeating his Olivier Award-winning performance (at least through early September) as the leering Emcee. He's not quite as menacing as Alan Cumming in the Mendes production, at times seeming fragile and almost adorable. But the actor is certainly mesmerizing, using his angular physicality and androgynous looks to tremendous effect and employing his natural charisma to such a degree that you can't take your eyes off him. During many dramatic scenes involving the other characters he silently lurks at the edge of the stage, doing nothing but making it seem like everything.

Gayle Rankin's Sally Bowles proves equally stunning. Her performance takes some warming up to, lacking the glamour and sexuality that have come to be associated with the role. Her Sally is more desperate and pathetic, and ultimately more moving, with her rendition of "Maybe This Time" registering with a hauntingly aching vulnerability. And she absolutely kills the title song, delivering it as the extended primal scream of a woman having an existential breakdown.

Ironically, however, Sally is not the heart and soul of the evening. That would be Bebe Neuwirth's Fraulein Schneider and Steven Skybell's Herr Schultz. The veteran performers nearly steal the show as the older couple who joyously find love late in their lives, with Schultz gifting her with pieces of fruit as if they were precious gems, only to tragically lose it in the face of the growing Nazi menace. Investing their performances with pathos and humor, they're deeply moving, and Neuwirth's rendition of "What Would You Do?" is the best I've ever heard. Also making a strong impression is Natascia Diaz as Kost, Schneider's prostitute tenant who claims her clients are various relatives.

Not making such a strong impression, unfortunately, is Ato Blankson-Wood as Clifford Bradshaw. Partially, it's the fault of the character, who is more of an observer than participant in the proceedings. But the actor's bland work here doesn't even rise to that level, displaying next to no chemistry with Rankin and seeming at times as if he's wandered in from another show.

The conceptual staging isn't fully successful either. It works beautifully for the musical numbers set in the Kit Kat Club, but the book scenes, presented sans scenery or significant props in the center platform, seem overly abstract, as if the show was taking place not in 1930s-era Berlin but rather a celestial plane. Or, more accurately, a plane significantly lower down.

The general look of the show is as garish as you would expect, even more so, especially with Redmayne's costumes, designed by Tom Scutt, in which he's made to look at various times as a circus clown and militarized harlequin, complete with Nazi helmet. His Emcee is rather most frightening when simply sporting blonde hair and wearing a nondescript suit, the same look adopted by all the other characters while standing on the revolving stage in stiff formation during the production's chilling finale.

That's the ironic thing about this Cabaret. The main selling point seems to be all the bells and whistles, and no doubt many audience members will get a kick out of all of the immersiveness. But it feels most powerful when simply getting down to the basics. And when it does, you'll be ready glad you've come to Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.

Cabaret opened April 21, 2024, at the Kit Kat Club (August Wilson Theatre).  Tickets and information: kitkat.club