Cabaret entertains, unsettles us
Cabaret
(out of 4) Book by Joe Masteroff. Music by John Kander. Lyrics by Fred Ebb. Originally directed by Sam Mendes. Until Sunday at the Princess of Wales Theatre, 300 King St. W. mirvish.com or 416-872-1212
Rarely has the signature Cabaret greeting been so tempting on a cold winter night: “Leave your troubles outside . . . In here, life is beautiful.”
A night at the Princess of Wales Theatre seems like the perfect excuse to turn off your phone, ignore your breaking news email alerts, forget words like “Muslim ban,” “Mike Flynn” and “alternative facts,” and instead get carried away by some flashy song and dance numbers and a love story.
Certainly, that’s what the patrons of the Kit Kat Klub are looking for in 1931 Berlin.
The eventual revelation of the horror the Klub hides is what makes this 1966 Kander and Ebb musical even more of a chilling experience today (even the acronym of the Kit Kat Klub has frightening contemporary parallels).
Mirvish Productions brings the national tour of Roundabout Theatre Company’s production to Toronto for a very limited visit, after this revival of a revival had a hit run on Broadway from 2014 to 2015.
What we see here is a remount of Roundabout’s1998 production by director Sam Mendes and co-director/ choreographer Rob Marshall, which at the time was a marked departure from the original production (directed by Hal Prince).
It turned the Kit Kat Girls and Boys into the orchestra, introduced Alan Cumming as a fishnets-and-suspenders-wearing Emcee and noticeably notched up the smut factor. But by the time Roundabout brought back the production to mark the company’s 50th anniversary, it had become the default style of the stage production, so much so that when Cumming reprised his Tony Award-winning role on Broadway (opposite Michelle Williams as Sally Bowles) it felt like a homecoming.
Randy Harrison has a big trench coat to fill as the figure who guides the audience, omnisciently, through numbers at the Kit Kat and the love story between the club’s star, Sally (Leigh Ann Larkin), and an impressionable American novelist, Clifford Bradshaw (Benjamin Eakeley).
Harrison personifies the atrocities simmering under the surface of Weimar-era Germany with plenty of tongue-in-cheek humour (with extra cheek).
Harrison manages to both seduce and frighten the audience — or is that frighten them into seduction?
His initial charm and breezy attitude can snap into a sharp glare or a terrifying rendition of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.”
Harrison’s Emcee continuously toys with the audience, who may or may not know what’s coming.
Harrison’s ambiguity contrasts with the straight-up, all-American charm of Eakeley as Clifford, classically handsome with the clear, deep voice of a leading man.
His early innocence is almost funny, asking Frau Schneider (a wonderful Mary Gordon Murray) for a room upon arriving in Berlin: “What do you have for a starving author?”
His gee-golly appeal is understandably attractive to the folks of the Kit Kat Klub, but Larkin’s Sally is almost equally upbeat; more of a manic pixie dream girl who starts clinging to Clifford’s arm.
Only when she sings her finale, “Life Is a Cabaret,” do her stunningly wide eyes betray her and bring sense to her portrayal: she has cracked and the pretence has fallen.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t help the relationship between Sally and Clifford feel less forced and underwritten.
Inside the Princess of Wales, or the Kit Kat Klub for that matter, life might seem beautiful for a moment.
But even as it entertains — Marshall’s choreography is consistently thrilling and Mendes’ direction doesn’t come off as cheap imitation — Cabaret’s unsettling conclusion reminds us not to get distracted by the song and dance and forget about what’s waiting behind the curtain.