So: Cabaret
May. 8th, 2014 02:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustMom and I lined up for rush tickets for this, and ended up with house-seats that put us so close to the stage that Alan Cumming could saunter by within grabbing range, grinning at us sardonically/cheekily. It's a revival of the Sam Mendes revival, originally done at the Donmar Warehouse in the 1990s before moving to Broadway for an extended run, and firmly established Cumming as the Emcee of this generation; the setting for this particular run is the former Studio 54, smallish and intimate, with its weird brass-couloured mouldings and rich red velvet curtains. The ensemble mirrors multiple parts, can all dance, all sing, and all play instruments: the "bee-oo-ti-full orchestra" itself spilling out onto the stage, with Cumming either centre-set or off to the side, commenting on the action. It's Weimar Berlin, the end of the world, and everybody's for hire/sale, "renting by the hour."
Unlike the movie, which I saw when I was thirteen or so and educating myself about film at Toronto's rep cinemas, this is a version which fully restores the sexual angles inherent in the original text: American novelist Cliff Bradshaw (Bill Heck), based on Christopher Isherwood (whose memoir, I Am A Camera, inspired the play as a whole), is overtly gay/functionally bisexual; he's previously had an affair with one of the Kit Kat boys, and is possibly touring Europe as a penniless artiste because he's estranged from his rich family/their heterosexual expectations of him. And it's his "safe" sexuality which makes Sally Bowles (Michelle Williams) decide to move in with him initially, but at some point, her inherent need to always be at the centre of attention must have caused her to stick her hands down his pants, with surprising results--she gets pregnant, and when she laughingly jokes "It could even be yours!", Cliff suddenly starts seeing visions of the "normalcy" he never thought himself capable of dancing before his eyes. He doesn't care that that's not what she wants, of course; after all, he's seen her try to sing. But this is the tension that brings them down, in the end.
A word about Sally in general, here--it's a tricky part, and the movie mis-stepped hideously when it comes to her, because the point is that Sally really is not supposed to have a Liza Minelli-level voice. Oh, it's not like she can't carry a tune at all, or manage a dance routine, but you have to be able to believe that she really did have to fuck her way into show business, just like you have to find her attempt to get all Marlene Dietrich-level dominatrixish in "Mein Herr" sweet but sort of appalling, especially considering she gets fired/cast aside by Kit Kat manager Max immediately afterwards, in true German style: "When I'm through/Then I'm through/...Toodle-oo." This is what Natasha Richardson got, what Judi Dench got, what Jennifer Jason Leigh got, and what Williams gets. She has a slight-to-strident voice pitched like a British typewriter, only shakily posh, and a horrible vulnerability; determined to "go like Elsie", she spends her time at the edge of scenes with a vaguely blank look, rehearsing songs in her head that only occasionally spill into the narrative ("Maybe This Time," for example, which functions as an inner monologue done in a tight spotlight, as Cliff goes Charlie Brown adult voices-style "waaah waaah wah-wah-wah waaaah" in the background ).
And then there's Cumming, thuggish and tricksterish by turns in his leather trenchcoat, his spats and suspenders, his rouged nipples and black lipstick and greasy kiss-curls. He flirts with everybody, pouts if he doesn't get big enough laughs, and is prone to popping up suddenly while dressed in drag, blurting: "It's me again! It vas me the whole time! Surprise, no?" "I wonder who gets to draw that swastika on his ass every night," Mom mused, as we left. I spent the first act grinning at him like a loon, and the second act fearing for him--as one critic says, he starts to wilt and bloom at once under the radiation sickness of Hitler's rise to power, fending off impending doom by becoming increasingly outrageous, teetering around in high heels and chandelier earrings. His version of "I Don't Care Much" is done through tears, almost unintelligibly. "And vhere are your troubles now?" he demands at the end, just before doffing the trenchcoat to reveal pyjamas decorated with a yellow star and a pink triangle.
Finally, while I found myself surprisingly conversant with most of the Kit Kat songs, I was consistently amazed by the backbone pieces tracking the equally dead-end relationship between German boardinghouse proprietress Frau Schneider (Linda Edmond) and Jewish fruit vendor Herr Schultz (Danny Burstein). Also Brecht/Weill-tinged, her sadly practical arias "So What?" and "What Would You Do?" bracket his amazing "Married" ("and the old despair that was often there/suddenly ceases to be/when you wake one day, look around and say/somebody wonderful married me"). Then there's "It Couldn't Please Me More," possibly the only love song ever built around a pineapple. As with so much in the play, we think we know where things are going to end up, and we do...but it's the getting there that hurts the most.
Anyhow. I left wondering about everybody, to the extent that I actually did a search for fic. Does Sally survive World War II, return to Chelsea and marry somebody? Does she become the Mama you shouldn't tell what you saw? And what about Cliff--how fast can he write that book? What are the 1950s going to be like for him? Frau Schneider probably weathers the storm, the way she always has thus far, but not so Herr Schultz--he has too much pride. I'm hoping Herr Ludwig and Fraulein Kost get killed, but I don't dare to hope that the Emcee doesn't. One way or the other, man: that's good Broadway.
Unlike the movie, which I saw when I was thirteen or so and educating myself about film at Toronto's rep cinemas, this is a version which fully restores the sexual angles inherent in the original text: American novelist Cliff Bradshaw (Bill Heck), based on Christopher Isherwood (whose memoir, I Am A Camera, inspired the play as a whole), is overtly gay/functionally bisexual; he's previously had an affair with one of the Kit Kat boys, and is possibly touring Europe as a penniless artiste because he's estranged from his rich family/their heterosexual expectations of him. And it's his "safe" sexuality which makes Sally Bowles (Michelle Williams) decide to move in with him initially, but at some point, her inherent need to always be at the centre of attention must have caused her to stick her hands down his pants, with surprising results--she gets pregnant, and when she laughingly jokes "It could even be yours!", Cliff suddenly starts seeing visions of the "normalcy" he never thought himself capable of dancing before his eyes. He doesn't care that that's not what she wants, of course; after all, he's seen her try to sing. But this is the tension that brings them down, in the end.
A word about Sally in general, here--it's a tricky part, and the movie mis-stepped hideously when it comes to her, because the point is that Sally really is not supposed to have a Liza Minelli-level voice. Oh, it's not like she can't carry a tune at all, or manage a dance routine, but you have to be able to believe that she really did have to fuck her way into show business, just like you have to find her attempt to get all Marlene Dietrich-level dominatrixish in "Mein Herr" sweet but sort of appalling, especially considering she gets fired/cast aside by Kit Kat manager Max immediately afterwards, in true German style: "When I'm through/Then I'm through/...Toodle-oo." This is what Natasha Richardson got, what Judi Dench got, what Jennifer Jason Leigh got, and what Williams gets. She has a slight-to-strident voice pitched like a British typewriter, only shakily posh, and a horrible vulnerability; determined to "go like Elsie", she spends her time at the edge of scenes with a vaguely blank look, rehearsing songs in her head that only occasionally spill into the narrative ("Maybe This Time," for example, which functions as an inner monologue done in a tight spotlight, as Cliff goes Charlie Brown adult voices-style "waaah waaah wah-wah-wah waaaah" in the background ).
And then there's Cumming, thuggish and tricksterish by turns in his leather trenchcoat, his spats and suspenders, his rouged nipples and black lipstick and greasy kiss-curls. He flirts with everybody, pouts if he doesn't get big enough laughs, and is prone to popping up suddenly while dressed in drag, blurting: "It's me again! It vas me the whole time! Surprise, no?" "I wonder who gets to draw that swastika on his ass every night," Mom mused, as we left. I spent the first act grinning at him like a loon, and the second act fearing for him--as one critic says, he starts to wilt and bloom at once under the radiation sickness of Hitler's rise to power, fending off impending doom by becoming increasingly outrageous, teetering around in high heels and chandelier earrings. His version of "I Don't Care Much" is done through tears, almost unintelligibly. "And vhere are your troubles now?" he demands at the end, just before doffing the trenchcoat to reveal pyjamas decorated with a yellow star and a pink triangle.
Finally, while I found myself surprisingly conversant with most of the Kit Kat songs, I was consistently amazed by the backbone pieces tracking the equally dead-end relationship between German boardinghouse proprietress Frau Schneider (Linda Edmond) and Jewish fruit vendor Herr Schultz (Danny Burstein). Also Brecht/Weill-tinged, her sadly practical arias "So What?" and "What Would You Do?" bracket his amazing "Married" ("and the old despair that was often there/suddenly ceases to be/when you wake one day, look around and say/somebody wonderful married me"). Then there's "It Couldn't Please Me More," possibly the only love song ever built around a pineapple. As with so much in the play, we think we know where things are going to end up, and we do...but it's the getting there that hurts the most.
Anyhow. I left wondering about everybody, to the extent that I actually did a search for fic. Does Sally survive World War II, return to Chelsea and marry somebody? Does she become the Mama you shouldn't tell what you saw? And what about Cliff--how fast can he write that book? What are the 1950s going to be like for him? Frau Schneider probably weathers the storm, the way she always has thus far, but not so Herr Schultz--he has too much pride. I'm hoping Herr Ludwig and Fraulein Kost get killed, but I don't dare to hope that the Emcee doesn't. One way or the other, man: that's good Broadway.
