Interview: Come to the CABARET in New Orleans!

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome to Roundabout Theatre Company's cast of CABARET who opens their show this week at the Saenger Theatre! We are so happy to have you here. For those of you who will be in attendance this week, you're in for some pure awesomeness. Whether you're drawn to this show for its music, its choreography, or its incredible story oozing with sass and history, prepare to be both entertained and educated.

CABARET tells the story of Sally Bowles - a young performer at the Kit Kat Club - and her comrades in 1930s Germany as the Nazis are rising to power. She falls in love with American writer Cliff Bradshaw who is in Germany at the time to find some good material for his next novel. While Sally and her friends muck it up nightly, the world around them is falling apart, and they seem to be living in willful ignorance as it's much easier to have fun than to face reality.

Lee Aaron Rosen who plays Cliff in this Roundabout Theatre production chatted with me about his experience with CABARET and why this show is more than it at first seems.

What was your very first experience with CABARET?
Oh goodness, I don't even know. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure. I don't know a time when I didn't know it.

Is it a show that you grew up liking?
I grew up knowing the music from it, but not it so to speak.

I know the music from CABARET as well, but I'm not as familiar with the story as I'd like to be. Would you give me a summary of what the show is about?
Sure. It's about the lives of people living in Weimar Germany and how their lives are affected by the changes in the world around them.

So this takes place in Germany while the Nazi party is rising in power. There seems to be a dichotomy between what is happening in this nightclub and then what's going on in Germany at the time outside of the nightclub's walls. Do you think our characters are naïve to what was going on or maybe living in an "ignorance is bliss" state of mind?
Yeah, I mean I think that as the show goes on they sort of wake up to the reality around them. In a way they're amusing themselves to death. They're looking the other way. They're not really acknowledging, until they're forced to, how the world around them is crumbling. They're avoiding confronting the realities of their lives.

There's that saying "history repeats itself," and I hope that part of our history never repeats itself, but how do you think this whole idea of living in this purposeful ignorance is relevant today?
We willfully distract ourselves with the fun and the shiny and the racy and it's a way of actually having to avoid confronting some of the ugliness that's out there and having to take responsibility for some of it.

You play Cliff, who is our American living in Germany for the time being. Tell me about how he fits into the story.
He comes to Germany to find something to write about for his next novel. He's looking outside of himself for something interesting or engaging. He's looking for some sort of inspiration in the world outside, but it's also a way of avoiding having to really write honestly about his own inner experience, his personal experience with the world. It's an avoidance strategy disguised as serious artistry, I think... the way I play him at least. He observes this world as an outsider and he falls in love with Sally Bowles and she with him... or at least they think they do. I'll leave that to the audience to decide. He eventually has to become not a passive observer, but a man of action so to speak, and actually acknowledge that he can no longer be a passive observer of what's going on.

Can you tell me about his relationship with Sally?
They meet in the Kit Kat Club where he goes for the first time on New Years Eve. She calls him at one of the tables, they have an encounter backstage, and she comes to him out of convenience. She's being kicked out of her living situation. She's living with one of the owners of the club, and she recognizes this naïve young American, and she comes and visits him and kind of cons her way into living with him. That's how their relationship begins. She's such a fascinating figure that he can't resist.

So many people have heard the music from CABARET, but may not necessarily know what the show is about. Why do you think that is?
Well Kander and Ebb, the composer and lyricist, are such an amazing songwriting team. They're legendary, and they have written some of the most enduring songs in American history. It stands to reason that people know these melodies without even knowing how they know them necessarily. I mean you hear music boxes that play 'Cabaret,' and of course Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey made a lot of these songs famous when they portrayed Sally and the Emcee in the film. Some of them are ubiquitous. You can't avoid them even if you don't know what you're listening to.

CABARET tends to have the reputation of being pretty edgy while also having a great story to tell. What do you think gives it that edge or makes it a little darker than a lot of other musicals out there?
I think it takes people by surprise because, again, these songs are so ever-present in our cultural consciousness, and people think they know what it's about. People listen to the melody of 'Cabaret' and aren't necessarily giving a ton of thought to the lyrics. And of course I think a lot of people equate the term "musical" with "uplifting" or "upbeat," and they don't know it's going to go any deeper than that. A lot of these songs are upbeat and there is a lot of comedy to it, but in a way it's kind of like a situation in the world that's depicted and you're sort of lulled into believing that everything is fun and debaucherous, but it's more than that. It's so much more than that.

Do you think people respond better to the story being told through music than if it were a straight play?
Absolutely, I do. I think that you make people comfortable. You get people to listen a little more closely. It's almost like a Trojan horse in a way. You get inside the gates of their consciousness, and then the warriors jump out, you know? And people are along for the ride. It's not a lecture. It is entertainment, but it has something to say, and that doesn't mean that it has to be a lecture series.

Tell me about the choreography for this show because it's a very distinct style that's very unlike anything else.
Oh, yeah, I mean I don't do a whole lot of dancing in it, but it's amazing because you get these incredibly skilled ensemble members and they're amazing dancers one and all. The moves are, in some songs at least, almost willfully imprecise in a way to suggest that these dancers are the rank and file of Berlin in that day. There's something kind of ferocious and dirty about the way that they move. It's chaotic even as they're following the choreography very tightly.

How is this tour of CABARET different than other productions in the past?
I think this staging in particular by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall is visionary. It's unflinching. It's very in your face in some ways, but it's also actually incredibly nuanced and complicated. Everything is... it takes nothing for granted. They've really done an incredible job, as has our director BT McNicholl, in re-interpreting this material and gazing into it really intently and trying to bring out something new from it without altering it in any way. Without changing the book or anything like that.

Is there anything else that you'd like to add or that you would like audiences to know?
I would say just really come prepared to enjoy yourselves in a way that is... expect to be fully engaged. Expect to be entertained, but know that what you're about to take in is not empty calories. It tastes good, but you will feel like you've... it'll be satisfying for more than just the time that you're in the theatre.

Check out http://www.saengernola.com for more information!

ARTICLE MAY ALSO BE VIEWED HERE: http://www.nolabackstage.com/single-post/2016/04/06/BWW-Interview-Come-to-the-CABARET-in-New-Orleans