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Two
for one: (l-r) McGrath, Whitton and Ford in HMT’s
Cabaret.
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Don’t
Tell Mama
By
Kathy Ceceri
Cabaret
Book
by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb,
directed by Steve Coats
Home
Made Theatre, through Oct. 31
Cabaret,
the 1966 musical based on Christopher Isherwood’s stories
of an English songstress in a seamy Berlin café just before
the rise of the Nazis, really became a hit when it was reconceived
for the movies by director-choreographer Bob Fosse in 1972
(with an expanded role for Joel Grey as the Emcee and a breakout
performance by Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles). Then, in the
mid-’90s, it was reconceived again for Broadway. This time,
reviewers said Natasha Richardson was a less talented, more
vulnerable Sally, and Alan Cummings an even more sinister
and controlling Emcee.
When
I heard that the very talented Jonathan Whitton, a Skidmore
alumnus, was choreographing and starring in Home Made Theatre’s
production, I figured I’d finally get a chance to see some
of what I missed with the recent revival and compare it to
the film, one of my favorites. What I discovered is that the
timing of the Broadway revival, coming at the tail end of
this country’s last period of peace and wild prosperity, may
have been more prescient than anyone realized. (“Sally, wake
up,” she’s told. “The party in Berlin is over.”) Here in the
midst of war and uncertainty, it feels almost indulgent to
revel in Cabaret’s bawdiness, to think back to a time
when we didn’t know what terrors lay ahead.
And this Cabaret doesn’t pull any punches. The Kit
Kat Club dancers don’t suggest what they’re offering; they
show it. It’s lucky this is legitimate theater, because Saratoga
Springs isn’t normally this risque. (Schenectady would close
this show right down.) Add Whitton’s stamping, pounding choreography,
as much jackboot as burlesque, and the approaching menace
becomes very real. Grafted onto this dark vision is a typical
Broadway musical story of a young American writer, Cliff Bradshaw,
drifting around Europe waiting for inspiration, who becomes
entangled with the anything-to-shock Bowles; and an even more
traditional comic subplot involving the courtship of Bradshaw’s
spinster landlady and another boarder, an elderly fruitseller
(Lotte Lenya and Jack Gifford in the original). The result
is a wild ride for the audience, which has to keep switching
between world-weary sophistication and maudlin sentimentality
just to keep up.
Along with the high-energy Whitton and crew, who went all
out with numbers like “M-O-N-E-Y” and “If You Could See Her,”
Amelia Wargo as Sally and AJ Rendo as Cliff are a pleasure
to watch. Wargo’s accent may have been more old Hollywood
movie star than British, but her singing was marvelous, and
Rendo’s voice wasn’t bad either. As Fraulein Schneider, Robin
Leary got some of the best numbers in the show—“So What?”
and “What Would You Do?”—and used them to bring out the landlady’s
likable pragmatism. Ron Delucia’s Herr Schultz was also appealing,
but his lack of a singing voice could have been turned to
more humorous effect à la Gifford, the old Cracker Jack TV
pitchman.
An unexpected treat was Jeremy Buechner as Ernst Ludwig, who
befriends Cliff but saves his own secret for the end. And
Dawn Oesch as Fraulein Kost, the “patriot” who is only doing
her duty being kind to all those sailors, is both funny and
scary at the same time. The Kit Kat Klub boys and girls certainly
deserve mention, especially the soloist on “Tomorrow Belongs
to Me.” (But do their mothers know what they’re doing?) Given
the great songs of Kander and Ebb, Douglas Bishoff’s onstage
band could have been more precise, but all in all, HMT’s Cabaret
makes for a rewarding, if exhausting, evening.
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