Rebecca Frecknall’s production of Kander and Ebb’s magnum opus is so good that all future versions should be measured against it.
20 April 2022
There comes a point with award-winning musicals where the lead actors who helped garner so much success, in Cabaret’s case Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley, move on to pastures new. It is down to whoever replaces Hollywood star and ‘Performer of The Year’ to show how much in the way of longevity the production is likely to enjoy.
By way of full disclosure, I have to admit I never saw the aforesaid Eddie and Jessie strutting their stuff in Rebecca Frecknall’s superlative and inspirational reworking of the theatrical masterwork that is Cabaret. I have a strict upper-limit to the cash I will lay out on shows I review, one which reflects the maximum amount I think most canny London theatregoers would want to spend. It is only with the March 21st arrival of Fra Fee as the Emcee, and Amy Lennox as Sally Bowles, that I have been able to squeeze an OK ticket within budget.
Of course, the new performers’ arrival has been facilitated by the fact that Eddie and Jessie never really had the show’s top billing in the first place. That honour goes to theatre designer Tom Scutt’s and consultant Charcoalblue’s reinvention of the Playhouse Theatre as the dark and enticingly seedy Kit Kat Club, an architectural makeover which remains every bit as astounding as when first it wowed audiences back in November last year.
Setting the louche, dreamy, subterranean, speak-easy phenomenon of the venue aside, six months after opening, is the show itself still of award-winning standard? By which I mean, do the new central performances indicate a lacklustre ‘make do and mend’ attitude towards the production or, is a justifiably prolonged run in prospect?
Well, based on the performance I saw (and if there is any justice in theatre-land) it will be the latter. In fact, Frecknall and her team have devised a production of Kander and Ebb’s magnum opus so good that it has the only 5-star rating I have given this year.
Audiences enter the Kit Kat Club through a non-descript door at the back of the venue. Thence they move down through steep stairs into a narrow corridor deep into the bowels of the theatre. Heading into the darkness this way is an apt metaphor for where 1930’s Germany is destined: into cavernous, dark, obscure night. And in this show, we go there right with them.
There are three interconnected relationships that drives Cabaret’s narrative.
The first is between cabaret-singer cum good-time-girl, Sally Bowles, performed with a kind of gritty working class fierceness by Amy Lennox, and Omar Baroud’s earnest aspiring novelist, Clifford Bradshaw.
The second, highlighted in this production more than usual, takes place between Sally and Clifford’s boarding-housekeeper, Frau Schneider (portrayed with heart-breaking disillusionment by the marvellous Vivien Parry), and Jewish greengrocer Herr Schultz (a tremendous Josh Andrews in the matinee I saw).
The final relationship is the incipient emerging passionate embrace between the German people and Fascism.
As you will know if you have seen Cabaret before, or read a history book, only one of these relationships has legs and none of them end well.
Of the songs, Lennox’s bitter and angry rendering of ‘Life is A Cabaret’ stands out, alongside Parry’s defensive and pleading version of ‘What Would You Do?’. Fra Fee goes full throttle with a languorously seductive version of the “Tomorrow Belongs to Me”, which though written as a pastiche of a Nazi anthem still casts a sense of guilty discomfort in the pit of one’s stomach.
This is a stunning version of a work of genius. See it.
Music John Kander
Lyrics Fred Ebb
Book Joe Masteroff
Design Tom Scutt
Director Rebecca Frecknall
Cast
Emcee Fra Fee
Sally Bowles Amy Lennox
Clifford Bradshaw Omar Baroud
Fraulein Schnieder Vivien Parry
Ernst Ludwig Stewart Clarke
Herr Schultz Josh Andrews
Duration: 2 hours 45 mins. One interval.
Full Disclosure: I paid full box-office price for the ticket.
