Reviewed by Ewart Shaw, Friday 23rd and Saturday 24th April 2021.
Come to this
Cabaret, old chum. This exciting and energetic production would sit comfortably on any stage in Australia. There's enough energy to power a small town pouring off the stage of the Scott Theatre, that most underused of Adelaide venues.
Cabaret, that blend of sex, sleaze, and subversion, was one of the first casualties of the Nazi's rise to power in Germany in the 1930s. Its refusal to play by any rules but its own marked it for extermination.
Cabaret, the Kander and Ebb musical set in a Berlin teetering on the edge of a volcano, is the ideal vehicle for the first graduating class of the music theatre course at the University of Adelaide. They sing, they dance, and they act. I've never liked the phrase 'triple threat', but these performers are multiply gifted.
The story is probably familiar to most, from the movie. It's New Year's Eve, and author, Clifford Bradshaw, meets Ernst Ludwig on the train to Berlin and is instantly drawn into the deceptions and the politics of German life in the 30s. Within a few hours, he's found a room with Fraulein Schneider, met Fraulein Kost, the sailors' friend, and arrived at the Kit Kat club. It's not the sordid and disreputable venue you might expect, but shiny with chrome stairs and handrails. A drink, a proposition, and then the Emcee announces Fraulein Sally Bowles.
There she is, or rather there they are. There are two different casts on alternate nights. Director Erin James is blessed with two very different, equally compelling women in the role. Amy Roff, dark-haired, feline, is a Sally who is a bundle of neuroses, in a tight corset, laces about to snap. When she returns to the Kit Kat Club for the final number, she delivers the Cabaret anthem, barely holding herself together, desperate and needy. In the same scene, Sally Ostrowski, blonde, voluptuous, and narcissistic, commands like an Aryan goddess, a Brunnhilde, as the world goes up in flames around her.
Aiden Wang is totally delicious as the EmCee, a naughty cherub, light of foot, and with a great singing voice. You love him from his first appearance, but he completely lacks the menace needed to underscore the growing tragedy of life in the City on the edge. The other female leads are outstanding. Georgia Broomhall, as the landlady, Fraulein Schneider, delivers her big number,
So What, and you think maybe in a few years time, it will be Mama's turn in Gypsy. She has the voice. Eliza O'Connell, as Fraulein Kost, the sailor's friend, really lets rip in the first act finale. That's when
Tomorrow Belongs to Me, a lyrical song of youthful aspiration, beautifully sung by Mitre Khammash, and small male voice ensemble becomes the full-scale, full-frontal, Nazi anthem, a declaration of intent.
Jack Doherty is totally convincing as Clifford Bradshaw and gets to sing
Don't Go, a late addition to the score, and Duncan Carmichael, as Ernst Ludwig, a friendly and likeable German, embodies the way friendly and likeable Germans can also be Nazis. You really feel for
Andrew Smith's Herr Schultz, courting Fraulein Schneider with a pineapple, certain that things will go well because he's a Jew, yes, but also a German. Neither he, nor Georgia Broomhall, are greyed up to be aged but, as she says, "so what".
The dancing is outrageously entertaining, high octane, and high spirits. It's a real workout for all. Choreographer, Zoë Komazec, also has a chorus line of suitably lithe and long-legged Kit Kat girls at her disposal.
Musical Director, Peter Johns' band is movie-worthy, a suave sound, beautifully mixed and balanced. The eight musicians are behind the set, but there's never a hitch in the playing. It's actually, maybe, a little too smooth. There's none of the raunchiness that a cabaret ensemble should generate, a bent chord or two, something raucous in the brass, something sly from the saxes. That aside, you won't hear better in Adelaide any time soon.
While the usual prohibitions on photos and recording were made, I took the opportunity to get a few shots of the set before the lights went down. Executive Producer and Head of School, George Torbay, designed it, and it worked really well.
Maybe time has softened the impact of the show. Maybe it's social amnesia. The Kander and Ebb 1966 musical is rooted in
Christopher Isherwood's 1939 stories, Goodbye to Berlin, via
John Van Druten's 1951 play, I Am a Camera, and we have come a long way since then. What was sleazy in the sixties, one man and two women in a bed is now commonplace. Even the bestially anti-Semitic Gorilla routine barely raises more than a laugh.
There, as the man said, is the rub. Without going all 'young people nowadays', and lamenting their lack of historical understanding, this show, full of dance routines and love affairs, is about the collapse of freedoms that we now take for granted under the slow advance of pretty insidious national and social beliefs. So, let's say Dance, etc.:10, Politics: 3
