One of Broadway's greatest productions returns! Alan Cumming ("The Good Wife," Roundabout's The Threepenny Opera) reprises his Tony-winning performance as the Emcee in Sam Mendes (Skyfall, American Beauty) and Rob Marshall's (Nine and Chicago, the films) Tony-winning production of Cabaret. Three-time Academy Award nominee Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn, Brokeback Mountain) also stars, making her Broadway debut as Sally Bowles, alongside Tony nominees Danny Burstein (Follies, South Pacific) and Linda Emond (Death of a Salesman, Life (x) 3). Right this way, your table's waiting at Cabaret, John Kander, Fred Ebb and Joe Masteroff's Tony-winning musical about following your heart while the world loses its way.
Starting November 11, the Kit Kat Klub welcomes Golden Globe nominee Emma Stone (Easy A, The Help), making her Broadway debut as Sally Bowles for a limited time only.
I don't share in the general enthusiasm for Mr. Cumming's overcooked performance, which pales in intensity when compared to the diamond-hard detachment that Joel Grey, who created the role in the original stage production, brought to Bob Fosse's extraordinary 1972 film version, from which Messrs. Mendes and Marshall borrowed a thing or three. But Michelle Williams plays Sally Bowles, the shopworn diva of the Kit Kat Club, with a poignant blend of vulnerability and desperation, while Linda Emond and Danny Burstein are as good as it gets as Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz, the couple whose middle-age romance serves as a backdrop to Sally's doomed affair with the bisexual Clifford Bradshaw (played with just the right amount of small-town naiveté by Bill Heck). While I like 'Cabaret' better when it's done on a smaller scale with shabbier décor, the way that Rhode Island's Trinity Repertory Company did it in 2009, this staging is fabulously good in its fancier way.
Cumming, who began his huge American career with this Tony-winning pansexual ghoul of a performance, seems older, seedier, more used up than he did back when Sam Mendes' you-are-there environmental staging of the 1966 Kander/Ebb masterwork was so new and dangerous and radical. In other words, Cumming is better than ever -- wiser, more dissipated, even more deeply entertaining in the role he stunningly recreated from Joel Grey's iconic original. And that freshness is so infectious it spills over into a landmark production that closed in 2004 but feels, with one uneasy exception, as confident -- and about as dangerous -- as if it has been running ever since. The exception, alas, is Michelle Williams, making her Broadway and musical debut as Sally Bowles...Her Sally is timid, bland and covered up in costumes that make her seem almost chaste.
1966 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
1967 | US Tour |
National Tour US Tour |
1968 | West End |
London Production West End |
1982 | Regional (US) |
Regional Revival Regional (US) |
1986 | West End |
London Revival West End |
1987 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
1993 | West End |
Donmar Warehouse Revival West End |
1998 | Broadway |
Roundabout Revival Broadway |
2006 | West End |
London Revival West End |
2008 | UK Tour |
National Tour UK Tour |
2012 | West End |
West End Revival Production West End |
2014 | Broadway |
Roundabout Revival Broadway |
2016 | US Tour |
2016 National Tour US Tour |
2021 | West End |
London Production West End |
2024 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Production Broadway |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical | Danny Burstein |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Alan Cumming |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Michelle Williams |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical | Michelle Williams |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical | Danny Burstein |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Revival of a Musical (Broadway or Off-Broadway) | Cabaret |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical | Danny Burstein |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical | Linda Emond |
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