Seacoast Rep Expands Cast For Hit Musical CABARET

The Seacoast Repertory Theatre is breaking out of its pandemic bubble for its most ambitious production in over a year, with Cabaret. The multiple award-winning musical portrays the sexually open atmosphere of Jazz-Age Berlin and poses the question "What would you do?" in the face of looming fascism.

"It's our biggest return to normal yet," said Brandon James, co-director of the production and co-artistic director of the Seacoast Rep.

Cabaret will open July 22 with a cast of 20. Several of the performers were hired for the show last year before the pandemic emergency forced the Seacoast Rep scrap its planned production of Cabaret. The theater kept operating with a small artistic company that followed strict health protocols, limited contact outside its protected bubble, and turned to livestream theater to keep serving audiences until it could start readmitting the public in reduced numbers.

"Everybody is really excited," James said. "For the folks who are coming in, this is their return to theater for the first time in over a year and a half, and some were looking at their lives and wondering if it was ever going to come back."

Said Meryl Galaid, who plays boarding-house landlady Fraulein Schneider and has a background performing in cabaret-style shows, "People are going to be very entertained."

"There's some phenomenal talent and this show is going to bring the story of Cabaret to life. I'm hoping that perhaps people are going to walk away and think about where we are in our world, the times, and tolerance."

Cabaret depicts the freewheeling Berlin nightclub scene of the late 1920s, as chronicled by Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood had moved to Berlin as an openly gay man, and drew on his experience in the semi-autobiographical novel "Goodbye to Berlin," published in 1939.

The book inspired a Broadway drama, I Am a Camera. That in turn inspired the hit musical Cabaret, which debuted in 1966. A 1972 movie version directed by Bob Fosse starred Liza Minnelli in her signature, Oscar-winning role.

The musical depicts the lives of characters centered around a seedy cabaret, the Kit Kat
Club, and the growing cloud of Nazism over the colorfully hedonistic scene. Two relationships are central to the story. Cliff Bradshaw, loosely based on Isherwood, and cabaret-singer Sally Bowles, are lovers and roommates in the boarding house run by Fraulein Schneider, who falls in love with another tenant, Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit shop owner.

Cliff and Sally's relationship is challenged by his unease at the rising Nazi movement, while Fraulein Schneider's concerns over the growing political danger of her involvement with a Jewish man cloud their late-life romance.

The Seacoast Rep is putting its own twist on the production, by delving deeply into Isherwood's writings and experience and depicting Cliff Bradshaw's bisexuality more openly, as in some earlier versions of the story, James said.

"There's a lot of source material. We're paying homage," James said. He said both he and co-director Ben Hart are Isherwood fans and have extensively read his work. "All of his diaries are published and all of his love letters are published. We're bringing some of that stuff into it."

Isherwood's writings included extensive detail on his Berlin surroundings, which James and Hart used in designing the set. The Broadway costume designer known as DW also has had a big influence on the period authenticity of the Seacoast Rep's production, drawing on his own extensive knowledge of Cabaret and its era.

Cabaret productions over the years have varied in portraying the Nazi threat, some treating it as a simple plot twist that swiftly closes the curtain on the Kit Kat Club's merriment. The Seacoast Rep's version allows the menace to build. It highlights the impact on Bradshaw's sexual expression as well as the universal moral dilemmas faced by the main characters, as expressed in Fraulein Schneider's song, "What Would You Do?"

"Every character in this show is sort of faced with this moment of, what will you do when
the Nazis roll into town? And it asks of the audience: when the Nazis come down the
street, do you stand up to them and fight for what you know is right, or do you turn away
and close your eyes," James said.

The Seacoast Rep will still be operating with limited capacity during Cabaret, with social distancing observed in the interest of safety. Nevertheless, there is more seating available than earlier, and with an expanded cast and pit orchestra the elements are in place for the kind of dazzling, innovative production the Seacoast Rep is known for.

"It feels normal again," James said.

Cabaret runs July 22-Sept 5. Seacoast Rep show times are generally Thursdays at 7:30, Fridays at 8 pm, Saturdays at 2 pm and 8 pm, and Sundays at 2 pm and 8 pm. Tickets are
available through the Seacoast Rep box office at 603-433-4472, or online at
Seacoastrep.org/tickets. For student discounts, call the box office.

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