Review: QETC Theatre's CABARET at CC Amstel ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cabaret brings us back to Berlin, pre -WWII, when the Nazi party slowly began to rise.(music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, book by Joe Masteroff)

A world where you go to the cabaret in the famous and seedy Kit Kat Club to forget all your worries. Here we meet Sally Bowles (Sophie de Bruijn) an opportunistic young woman and leading lady of the Kit Kat Club.

She meets Clifford Bradshaw (Pádraig Turley) a young American writer. Bradshaw, who enjoys the company of Sally, but much more the company of men (his lover Bobby), agrees to let Sally move in with him in the boarding house of Fräulein Schneider (a beautiful role of Mimi van Amerongen).

The other guest residing in the boarding house is Fräulein Kost (played by Niki Today, the drag alter ego of Nikolai Slisser) who earns her keep by sleeping with a shipment of sailors, all to the dissapprovement of Fräulein Schneider, who doesn't like it all, but prefers the paid rent over it nevertheless. Niki Today as the Fräulein is a breath of fresh air, fun and sassy and yet beautifully vulnerable.

Fräulein Schneider, a German woman, falls in love with Herr Schultz (Ties Jansen) a Jewish fruitshop owner. She agrees upon marriage, but with the rising fascism, fearfully, she breaks off the engagement and sings the heartbreaking "What Would You Do?"

A wonderful choice of director Mark Winstanley: Cliff and his lover Bobby (Luca Diez) sing Maybe This Time as a duet, which makes way more sense for those characters, then it is for Sally, who sings it later on. Maybe This Time, a textbook case of a "I Want" song, doesn't make narrative sense for Sally, as we, the audience, have no clue whatsoever what she wants, besides survival perhaps. When Sally tells Clifford she's pregnant in Act II, he wants to leave the country with her, as soon as possible. But is that what Sally wants?

Sally as a character is surprisingly the least relatable, as she doesn't show much of her desires, worries, wants - anything. Doesn't she want a baby at all? Does she know who the father is and therefore does not want to mother the child? The woman is an enigma. We can only guess.

In general, this rendition of Cabaret is powerful, yet misses somewhat the raunchiness, the dark vibe of the Berlin nightlife. The blatant disregard of reality, the fairytale they tried to portray, which would be in great contrast with, we now know, the unfathomable genocide about to come.

The sublayer of this knowledge, where the characters actually know or at least have the slightest of incline of what's going on but chose to ignore, would have made it more edgy.

That being said, the one character who does embody this sentiment... the Emcee.

He's the absolute star of the show, master of ceremonies aka the Emcee, a magnificent role of Jonas Bouckaert. An undeniable stage presence you would want from this role. Whenever he is on, he steals the show. Cheeky (both literally as figuratively, pun intended) charming, equally the all-knowing narrator as part of the story, Jonas is the perfect host.

The ending as envisioned by director Mark Winstanley is a gut-wrenching punch to the throat, resulting in utter silence from the audience. The Emcee leave us utter heartbroken with his adieu.

The cabaret is over....

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