Cabaret
Cabaret, the 1966 musical based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera and an adaption of 1939, Goodbye to Berlin, shares Christopher Isherwood's experiences in the poverty-stricken Weimar Republic. Isherwood's Cabaret is a love story about a fictional novice writer named Clifford Bradshaw who travels to Berlin, where he falls in love with heroine Sally, an easily-living careless young cabaret singer.
Porchlight Music Theatre, who set to revisit "I Am Camera," the musical that inspired Cabaret, this coming February, brings the audience back to the roaring twenties by opening the doors (via its replicated stage) to Berlin's historical Kit Kat Klub where life is a Cabaret. This hotbed of exploration, where the master of ceremonies provides love and lust to all that came to the club.
Porchlight's Cabaret was masterfully Emcee by Josh Walker. Walker kept the seductive night of love and lust fun and entertaining. However, the threatening political developments of Hitler and the Nazis' invasion would radically alter the sexually erotic nights at the club, and Clifford wanted to leave before things changed but Sally, rehired as the leading performer at the Kit Kat Club, wanted to stay and continue her seedy hedonism stardom.
This two-act, nineteen-song production at Porchlight, written by Isherwood, who visited Weimar-era Berlin and availed himself of underage male prostitutes while enjoying the Jazz cabarets, is well-directed by Michael Weber and this full-of-life reproduction was delightfully entertaining.
Doing her Porchlight debut, Erica Stephan was outstanding as Sally Bowles (cabaret singer Jean Ross), and Gilbert Domally shined as the love-stricken writer who was battling with his sexuality while trying to pay his rent giving English lessons. Josiah Haugen admirable performs the role of Ernst Ludwig, the Nazi comrade who enlists Cliff to smuggle secret packages from Paris.
Another stand-out performance came from returning Porchlight actor Neala Barron (Fräulein "Fritzie" Kost), whose operatic voice was terrific. And it's always good the see the talented Shaun White (Bobby), who was excellent in Priscilla Queen of the Desert (Mercury Theater). Not sure if he has the set of pipes, but I would love to see him play in the musical version of Elton John.
The real love story featured veteran actors Mary Robin Roth (Fräulein Schneider) and Mark David Kaplan (Herr Schultz). Both were brilliant as the German maiden and Jewish gentleman fruit vendor who wanted to marry, but Fraulein feared retaliation for marrying a Jew. The entire cast made this production an exhilarating and enthralling musical theatre performance at Porchlight.
“Where was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies, and there was a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany—and it was the end of the world...”
As hope fades and the terrifying look at totalitarianism rears its ugly head, we witness the lingering effects from the once bubbly Emcee, whose Cabaret has disappeared into the darkness of hatred, and the song, Tomorrow Belongs To Me, changing its meaning forever.
Cabaret has been reproduced for nearly sixty years but remains one of the hottest revised theatrical plays revisited.
Let's Play Theatrical Review Highly Recommends Cabaret at Porchlight Music Theatre.
Porchlight Music Theatre
Cabaret
Book by Joe Masteroff
Directed by Michael Webber
January 14- February 12, 2023
EXTENDED TO MARCH 5TH BY POPULAR DEMAND
