REVIEW: Life is a Cabaret, old chum!
Edmonton’s ambitious ELOPE Musical Theatre company is attempting to take us back to 1930s Germany in a new production of the classic musical Cabaret. As we enter the Westbury Theatre in the ATB Financial Arts Barns – where the show plays until May 11 – we immediately find ourselves in the “Kit Kat Club,” a rundown hot spot in the Berlin of the ’30s. Outside the dark forces of Nazism are gathering, but in here a sort of desperate decadence is being celebrated.
“Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!” sings the emcee. “In here, everything is beautiful! The girls are beautiful. Even the band is beautiful.”
The Emcee is soon joined by the “Kit Kat Girls,” suggestively dressed in flimsy lingerie and erotically flaunting themselves. The band under director Sally Hunt performs with solid musicality.
Written by John Kander (music), Fred Ebb (lyrics), and Joe Masteroff (book), first produced in 1966, and clocking in at two hours and 15 minutes with an intermission, Cabaret focuses on the sleazy nightlife at this underground hangout. The story evolves around American writer Cliff Bradshaw (played by Scott Boomer) and his rocky relationship with the English performer Sally Bowles (Melenie Reid). He’s sexually ambiguous. She’s on a destructive collision course with her own excesses. The mismatched relationship is doomed from the beginning by their perverse attitudes – and by the sinister rise of the Nazi movement which eats away at people’s values and destroys their lives.
Reid brings a pained fragility to the role of the bad girl Sally. Her world is crumbling around her, and although radiant and appealing, she’s not too bright. All she can see is the fun she’s having. Reid has a killer voice and turns her various Kander and Ebb big production numbers like Don’t Tell Momma, Maybe This Time, and especially the title tune, into showstoppers.
The central character Cliff Bradshaw is a bland creation and there isn’t much that any actor has been able to do with it – from the movie to West End stage productions. Yet Boomer manages to create a bit of sympathy as the writer’s world collapses around him – a problem obvious to us but he is oblivious.
Adam Kuss is something of a revelation as the “emcee,” setting the style of the evening right off the head with his deliciously bawdy Willkommen. He’s not going to replace Joel Grey’s Oscar-winning performance, but he mounts a solid, creditable performance – by turns saucy and menacing, filling the moments with promises of forbidden pleasures to come. What might be missing is the depraved madness behind the diabolical bonhomie and garish make-up. However in Kuss’s ambiguous and pan-sexual performance there are moments where he is the only one to foresee the terrifying future that awaits all.
There is also a rather tender but doomed love story between a landlady and a shy Jewish green grocer. The two performers (Lucy Haines and Dustin Berube) will never remind you of Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, but they sing and give themselves over completely to the characters, and develop committed and moving performances.
The Kit Cat Girls have all the right moves and have been thoroughly schooled in the shimmy, the grind, the arch and, of course, the basic leg cross. (Kuss also developed the creditable choreography.)
The secret of any production of Cabaret is to deliver the energetic, spectacular musical moments while preserving the world-weary subtext. This ELOPE production is substantial, hits all its marks and makes for an entertaining evening.
