The John Kander and Fred Ebb musical 1966 “Cabaret” suffers from a question mark misstep concept that Christopher Isherford’s 1939 novel “Goodbye To Berlin” never did. Isherwood wrote the story about his observation of Berlin as the Nazi Party rose to power in the early 1930s, before the horror of age were clear (about a time before they happened at all), “Goodbye Berlin” is not harmed by hindsight and it is not strangled by self-inflicted irony.”Cabaret” doesn’t have that luxury and because the horrors of Hitler are always in the rear window of the show. It can’t stop sticking its subtext down our throat. The result is the sort of ridiculous moral equivalency we see in Dostoyevsky’s “Crime And Punishment” where an equality is implied between the murderer Raskolnikov and the prostitute Sonya. Try as it might, “Cabaret” equates the “Kit Cat Club” -a nightclub where sex is the currency, with the Nazi Party. It can’t help itself, “Cabarets” juxtapositioning of jingoists, Jews, and jollies, is morally idiotic but that’s what Fred Ebb wrote.
In the early 1930s, Cliff Bradshaw, a young American visits Berlin in an attempt to cure himself of writers block, he finds a room rented by a landlady in love with a Jewish man, and he finds the “The Kit Kat Club”, where a gifted MC performs with an orchestra of performers for rent and where the delightfully decadent English star singer Sally Bowles befriends him. They move in together till she aborts her baby and Bradshaw leaves the city for the US.
The musical was first produced on Broadway in 1966, in 1972, the greatest choreographer of them all, Bob Fosse’s movie, took the musical, returned it to its source, cut out the breaking into song aspect, making all the music (except for a Nazi Youth rally) occur at the club, and tied the two parts of his story tightly together with a tightly wound Michael York and a superbly gifted Liza Minnelli as a superbly ungifted Sally. The widening and narrowing also allowed for a better storyline and a clutch of John Kander’s great songs the best of them.
In 1993, Sam Mendes directed a revival in London and in 1998 it moved to “The Kit Kat Klub” a redesigned Henry Miller Theater on Broadway; a somewhat immersive show where the audience are watching in an actual club (it would eventually move to Studio 54). Alan Cummings played the MC and the late Natasha Richardson gave us a Sally Bowles equal but different than Liza’s. For one thing, Natasha was English and she did not give it a brash Yankee superstar turn. Closer to the source material, Natasha was an edgy, nervy self-deluding sad figure. Natasha was beautiful but not luminous, and at times not even beautiful. She was a scared little wreck, emotionally stunted who only manages to embrace who she is at the end, the heartbroken really is a camera “Cabaret”. A hugely popular and hugely gifted performance.
Also, since Natasha played Sally as a talentless singer she opened the floodgates to star turns by famous actresses as Sally. If they didn’t have to carry the music side (leaving it to Cummings wide shoulders), it became a perfect starter for the likes of : Jennifer Jason Leigh, Susan Egan, Joely Fisher, Gina Gershon, Deborah Gibson, Teri Hatcher, Melina Kanakaredes, Jane Leeves, Molly Ringwald, Brooke Shields, and Lea Thompson .
In 2014, Sam Mendes, the director of the 1993 revival and the Artistic Director of the Roundabout Theatre, brought the show to Studio 54 with Alan back as the MC and Michelle Williams as Sally. She was replaced by Emma Stone and Emma Stone was replaced by Sienna Miller today. I saw one of Emma’s final performances Saturday afternoon and I liked it, and her, enough to feel disappointed in the singing. Liza had no problem with the singing, she was such a force of nature you just bought in or got trampled, Richardson was a better actress than Liza, when you peeled away Liza’s Sally you arrived at a monstrous ego, she was blind to her environment because she was self-obsessed, Natasha was closer to being fast asleep till in the end, after the abortion, she tied herself to her fate. Emma performed her role like a dexatrim addicted mess, you can’t quite see what people liked about her, she wasn’t charming. Stone is considered by some, me as well, a great movie actress, and in “Cabaret” she was willing to be unglamorous, she made stockings and garters more desperate than sexy. She is so self-deluded she’s a drag and it works against the role, in battling her star voltage, she dims Sally’s: it is brave but a mistake. It isn’t fun to watch her.
Emma also can’t begin to carry the music and while I give her kudos for a brave, show concluding “Cabaret”, a nervous breakdown with Emma heartbroken breaking before our eyes. On stage, the lovely red haired actress loses, on purpose no doubt,her star power,, she looks too thin, too tired, she looks like a 21st century model. It is disturbing to watch her and you can’t help but read in the horrors of movie actresses starving themselves, on pills and coke. This is Emma acting (I have no idea what her personal life is like, this is an actor’s decision) and at the shows conclusion she has made the trip to the end and is cut up and alone. But IT ISN’T GREAT MUSIC. It isn’t a great version of “Cabaret” musically, and really, belting the song like Liza would have been an easier decision and maybe the right decision. Certainly, the song wasn’t written the way Emma performs it. It is like Stone is tearing at a scab, an embrace of hedonism whatever the cost. Sally’s decision to go like Elsie and not the “cradle to grave” line is what matters as the song is written but not as it is sung, yet Emma’s performance is a triumph of the will (if you will). The best song in her performance is an answer and also rebuke to the American she has left, and to the rest of us. Her voice is not there on the chorus, it is not world class, a little rushed, a little light, but on the verses she sings speaks and there is an air of contempt and self pity: it’s an embrace of the end, of the inevitable devouring cabaret of life. As music, it doesn’t work. As acting, it works and then some. It explains Sally Bowles . And that’s Emma’s best moment of the show. “Mein Herr”, “Don’t Tell Mama”… in the movie, Liza performs “Money Makes The world go Round” with Joel Gray as the MC and the two have an affection for each other. Emma doesn’t and Emma and Cummings are in different musicals and Emma’s singing never does what is required of a singer and it is not enough to do what it is required of an actress
Because really, it is two plays, one includes the middle aged counter story, a real drag on the show (Fosse dumped it completely, replacing it with a vastly superior story of a Jewish heiress), and the songs at the Kit Kat Club, with Alan Cummings a one man Greek chorus in the former and a powerhouse in the latter. Cummings bisexually charged, hard cynically performance is the only thing better in 2015 than it was in 1998. He carries the night on his back, his “If You Could See Her” is the best I’ve ever seen, Cummings drips contempt and cleverness. He has to be great because he is the show. He is the musical in the Broadway musical. He no longer has a Richardson to help him, Emma doesn’t do enough, there are pieces missing from her performance and the musical is flawed in itself: it lives on through the movie. The dancing doesn’t have Fosse’s smooth sizzling sexuality. The story is a bore and so filled with hindsight it feels like a dumbing down of Isherwood’s original concept. It is left to Cummings to provide the show its kick and he does. You should should see it before it closes in March for the opportunity to view a great interpretation of a glorious role.
As for Emma. She is a great actress. A great movie actress and a great theatre actress. But she is not a great musical theatre actress.
Grade: B
