‘CABARET’ COMEBACK
KARSON ST. JOHN, WHO PLAYED THE EMCEE IN CYGNET’S 2011 PRODUCTION, RETURNS AFTER A 10-YEAR ACTING BREAK
Sean Murray was 18 years old the first time he performed in “Cabaret.” Since then, he has revisited the musical, either as an actor or a director, three or four more times.
This summer, the founding artistic director of Cygnet Theatre is returning to the show once again, remounting a production he directed 11 years ago at the Old Townbased theater. That production earned Murray a 2011 Craig Noel Award for Outstanding Direction of a Musical from the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle.
The production opening July 13 will re-create Sean Fanning’s seedy Kit Kat nightclub scenery from 2011 and will bring back two castmates from 2011 to reprise their roles. But that’s where the similarities end.
“It’s one of those plays that when you come back to it after some time, your new perspective might find layers to it that weren’t available when you were younger. It’s something you can constantly rediscover,” Murray said. “A lot has changed in the world since 2011, and we’re trying to discover new insights.”
Based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1945 book “Berlin Stories,” the 1966 musical takes place in a sleazy 1931-era German nightclub, where the performers and their audience are so focused on themselves that they don’t see the rising tide of fascism and antisemitism that will soon culminate in global war and the Holocaust. Murray said directing the show again with the uncertainty of Russia’s war on Ukraine and authoritarianism on the rise worldwide has changed how he’s approaching the material this time.
“This show is about the slow creep of authoritarianism and how it can develop around you without you really being aware of it,” he said. “It was a warning of what could happen and did happen in the 1930s. But I feel that now, currently, it’s a really big loud warning.”
Leading the show’s 14-member cast is Karson St. John, who is ending her 10-year hiatus from acting to reprise her role as Emcee of the Kit Kat nightclub. “Cabaret” was one of the last shows St. John performed in before she married her husband, Mitch McGinley, and took a self-imposed acting break to raise their two now-grade-school-age children, Chase and Siena. In the intervening years, St. John and her husband ran a yoga studio that transitioned to a fully online streaming practice just before the pandemic.
St. John moved to San Diego from her native New York in 2008 and was a busy working actor and part-time yoga instructor in 2011 when she auditioned to play a Kit Kat girl in Cygnet’s last “Cabaret” production. At the auditions, Murray said he noticed how muscular and “in tune with her body” St. John was, and he thought she could give the role of the Emcee, usually played by a man, a genderbending twist.
St. John said her jaw dropped when Murray offered her the role, and today she considers that one of the greatest experiences of her acting career: “It was and still is thrilling getting to chart a new course. It was also intimidating. But I decided I’m going to trust his vision. If Sean has faith in me, I have faith in myself.”
The role won St. John a 2011 Craig Noel Award for Best Lead Performance in a Musical.
“She’s a very engaging performer onstage, and there was this wonderful masculine-feminine energy that she brought with her,” Murray said of St. John. “Karson was a fabulous Teutonic icon. She was a sexy-dangerous Emcee who slowly turned into just dangerous.”
Like Murray, St. John said she’s reimagining her performance as the Emcee based on the current rise in fascism, racism and sexism in the United States and abroad.
“Last time I did ‘Cabaret,’ I though it could never get that bad again, but where we are right now in history, we don’t know what happens next,” she said. “The lines and songs in ‘Cabaret’ take on new meaning, and the fascism thing is really bone-chilling. There’s so much more at stake now, and we’ve all been through so much collective trauma.”
The production features Megan Carmitchel as cabaret singer Sally Bowles and WilBethmann as the American writer Cliff, the theatrical alterego of “Berlin Stories” author Isherwood. Linda Libby will reprise her 2011 role as Fräulein Schneider, the German landlady who falls in love with German Jewish grocer Herr Schultz, who will be played by Libby’s husband and fellow actor, Eddie Yaroch.