Cabaret, sans Eddie Redmayne

By Chase O’Brien

The wildly popular Broadway revival of Cabaret has a driving force behind its success: Eddie Redmayne. The Oscar-winner, and all around English darling, has been a huge draw for American audiences to the August Wilson Theatre, seeking to delight in his performance at the twisted and unnerving Emcee. But does the allure of this production hold up when its star player is out for the evening? On a Monday night in August, I went to find out for myself.

Since its debut on Broadway in 1966, Cabaret has been a benchmark of great American musical theatre. With numerous revivals, adaptations, and interpretations of the iconic songs and characters made famous by countless A-listers and Broadway stars, the show has cemented itself as one of the most culturally relevant and iconic pieces of theatre. The most recent revival saw actors like Emma Stone and Michelle Williams dawn the classic black slip and lace garters that make Sally Bowles infamous, with a returning Alan Cumming (famously paired with Natasha Richardson in 1998) dawning the thick makeup and black suspenders that have become tell-tale signs of a classic Emcee. But from its initial announcement, it was clear this new revival was not going trot the path of the predictable Cabaret.

Hailing from London’s West End, this production doesn’t seek to embody the Kit Kat Club, it seeks to become it. Director Rebecca Frecknall transforms the typical proscenium setting into an immersive and seedy European dive, an experience that begins the second your ticket is scanned. I arrived at the theatre an hour before curtain, right as the doors opened. Instantly I was ushered down a back alley and up some freight stairs into the rear of the theatre, upon which we were handed shots of cherry schnapps. This is when the experience began. In the interest of preserving some mystique about the spectacle and honoring Frecknall’s coverture (which is not so indirectly signaled by the sticker they put over your camera phone), I won’t reveal much of what goes on in that hour before curtain. Suffice to say it is well worth your time to arrive an hour before, splurge on a cocktail, and wander about the “club” enjoying all the revelry brought to life by some fantastic musicians and performers who set the tone for the rest of the show.

As 7:30 came around, the audience settled in its seats and waited for those infamous opening lines to be sung by Redmayne’s understudy Marty Lauter. No stranger to the stage or screen themselves, Lauter is best known for their participation on season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race under the drag name Marcia Marcia Marcia. Whatever hesitancy there might have been surrounding the absence of Redmayne was quickly dissipated by Lauter’s bombastic opening number and slightly chilling “Willkommen, bienvenue .….welcome.” Immediately, Lauter had the audience forgetting about the British heartthrob and buying into the strange and haunting chameleon that is the Emcee; blending right into the fabric of the piece rather than glaringly standing out from it. In other words, Lauter’s presence was a refreshing opportunity to engage fully with the Emceee, rather than the celebrity beneath the character. It is no easy task to stand in for someone as adored and respected as Redmayne but Lauter does the role justice through Frecknall’s clear vision of the Emcee’s arch aided by some superb costumes and makeup.

The show quickly reached its stride with the introduction of Gayle Rankin’s Sally Bowles. Rankin, who played Fräulein Kost in the most recent Broadway revival, was a relatively new name when her casting was announced. That all changed this summer with the season 2 premiere of HBO’s House of the Dragon on which Rankin appeared as a season regular, playing the new fan-favorite Alys Rivers. From her first breath on stage, it was evident the audience was charged to see Rankin’s take on the iconic character, and the enthusiasm was reciprocated by the actor herself. Her back to back renditions of “Don’t Tell Mama” and “Mein Herr” showcased an exceptional balance of frenzy and charisma that resulted in a spectacular control over the audience; I was just mesmerized by her. Her Sally began with a powerful, if manic, momentum that carried through to the end of the performance; a crescendo of witty and scene-stealing dialogue and drama that came crashing down in a gut-wrenching performance of the title song. What I find so enthralling about Sally Bowles is no two interpretations are the same. Try as we might, no one really can get a grip on her and Rankin so clearly allows herself to get lost in the mystery of the character that her blurred lines between inauthenticity and sincerity make for a spectacular take on the chanteuse.

Other standouts from the cast include Broadway legend Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell as Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz, an elderly duo drawn to each other by a shared desire for intimacy who’s romance is cruelly dismantled by the rising Nazism that serves as the political backdrop of the show. Neuwirth holds her own in an emotionally burdensome and demanding role while Skybell managed to break my heart a thousand times in his earnest yet naive portrayal of a man confused about his status as a Jewish German but determined to hope for the best. It is this love story, and its ultimate collapse, that is the beating heart of Cabaret. Where Sally Bowles and the Emcee dazzle us, Schneider and Schultz ground us in the reality of what we, the audience, know Berlin is about to become. It is the journey of this discovery, of this juxtaposition, that reveals the timelessness of Cabaret, and Frecknall’s clear understanding of the themes of apathy and assimilation guide the show to its penultimate performance handled beautifully by Rankin, who’s rendition of “Cabaret” left me speechless. Perhaps I’ve heard the song a dozen times, but only after reaching the climax of the material with this cast did it truly make sense.

What this production does well is its fearless and unapologetic presentation of the moral of this story. From the moment I stepped in the theatre I was so grounded in the world of the play that as the characters and the space subtly lost its luster, I found myself at the same moral divergence Sally Bowles and the rest of the players did in their final moments; continue to ignore or choose to see. Every element of the production had guided myself and my fellow patrons to that challenging choice, ultimately showing us that Cabaret is not too far removed from our own reality, where everyday we must remind ourselves that ignorance of the world does not necessarily mean freedom from its atrocities. I admire Fracknall’s ambitious decision to deliver something pertinent rather than nostalgic, and while I might have missed out on a stellar performance by Redmayne, the show clearly works not because of who headlines, but because of the sum of its parts. It is certainly worth a visit.

A Choreographer’s Nine

Gatsby: An American Myth

Scripted Hearsay