Raleigh Little Theatre Preview
Robert W. McDowell
June 5, 2009

RLT will perform the darker, more disturbing
1998 version of “Cabaret” from June 5th to 28th

Raleigh Little Theatre will perform the darker, more disturbing 1998 version of Cabaret on June 5-7, 11-14, 18-21, and 25-28 in its Cantey V. Sutton Main Stage Theatre. Long-time RLT artistic director Haskell Fitz-Simons warns that the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret, inspired by the 1993 Donmar Warehouse production directed by Sam Mendes, is definitely rated PG-13, because it may be inappropriate for children under 13.

“The cabaret girls perform most of their numbers in lingerie,” Fitz-Simons points out. “Some people may find that a little raw. People need to be ready for a harsh reality. There are some mature themes and difficult subject matter. I think we're pushing the envelope a little bit for Raleigh Little Theatre, but it's totally appropriate to the show.”

Mainly set in the sleazy Kit Kat Klub and Fraulein Schneider's shabby-but-clean rooming house in no-holds-barred Berlin in 1929 and 1930, the original 1966 version of the divinely decadent musical Cabaret starkly contrasts the sexual depravity on display with the ominous rise of Adolf Hitler, whose jackbooted thugs will burst onto the scene at any minute. Free love -- heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual -- is rampant, but the Nazis will emerge soon enough to spoil that party once and for all.

Cabaret, with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Joe Masteroff (based on The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood and I Am A Camera, playwright John van Druten's stage adaptation of Isherwood's reminiscences of pre-World War II Germany), made its Broadway debut at the Broadhurst Theatre on November 20, 1966; won eight 1967 Tony® Awards (including Best Musical); ran for 1,166 performances; and closed on Sept. 6, 1969.

The Roundabout Theatre Company's 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret, which accents the darker and more disturbing political and sexual overtones of Christopher Isherwood's ribald reminiscences, has already run longer than the original production. It opened on March 19, 1998 at Studio 54 and closed on Jan 4, 2004, after 2,377 performances and 37 previews. The latest revival of Cabaret won four 1998 Tony Awards (including Best Revival of a Musical).

The RLT cast for Cabaret includes Mark Ridenour as the leering Emcee, Shannon Pritchard Cook as the naughty nightclub singer Sally Bowles, Jesse R. Gephart as her admirer novelist Clifford Bradshaw, Eraine Oakley as boarding-house proprietor Fraulein Schneider, John Adams as her beau Herr Schultz, Kerry Sullivan as the streetwalker Fraulein Kost, and Jay Dolan as wealthy man of mystery Ernst Ludwig. The Kit Kat Girls include Bethany Brown, Lormarev Jones (who doubles as the understudy for Sally Bowles), Rebecca Leonard, Adrienne Morton, Kelly Sambrick, Debbie Tullos, and Jade Watson; and the Kit Kat Boys include Nick White, Brian Fisher, Tyler Rollins, Jon Skinner, and Jon Todd.

“Cabaret has always spoken to us,” claims RLT director Haskell Fitz-Simons. “The people in the Weimar Republic [1919-33] had just suffered a HUGE financial collapse. I think we can identify with that. There had just been a very unpopular war. I think people can identify with that. So, I think [Cabaret] is timely.”

He adds, “I first became aware of Cabaret when it first opened on Broadway back in 1966. It took the Broadway scene by storm, because it was the prototype of what later became known as the ‘concept musical' that Hal Prince was pretty much responsible for creating. But Cabaret has come a long way since then. Of course, everybody saw the movie in 1972.”

Fitz-Simons recalls, “I directed Cabaret during my first season at Raleigh Little Theatre, back in the spring of 1984. Since then, I've seen the Sam Mendes revival, which was incredible and impossible not to be influenced by.

“Tams-Witmark, which handles the property now licenses two different versions of Cabaret, the original version and the revival version,” says Fitz-Simons. “We're using the revival version. In some respects, it's a different play, even though it tells the same story.

“In both productions,” Fitz-Simons says, “the framework is still the same: We see the dissolution of society through the metaphor of [decadent musical] numbers in a cabaret. The cabaret mirrors what's happening in the outside world, which is Weimar Berlin, which is coming under the [influence] of the Nazi party and getting sucked down the tubes there.”

He adds, “What is different is that the revival production takes a harder look at what was going on with the people in Berlin at this time. I think the earlier production didn't so much gloss over the fact -- but played down the fact -- that people were STARVING. People were doing anything they had to do to survive. It just takes the characters that might have been ensemble -- or, let us be frank, chorus -- in the original production and rounds them out into individual characters who are different from the Broadway chorines that we saw in the original show. They are women and men who are performing in the not most upscale nightclub in Berlin, who are not the brightest shining stars in the firmament of Berlin celebrity, but people who are getting by any way they can.

“Sometimes, in order to survive, we have to go to some pretty dark places,” claims Haskell Fitz-Simons. “One of the big differences is that it's kind of implicit that these women and, sometimes, these men have taken money from people who would use them in any way that they would wish. I guess that we would call them hustlers and prostitutes -- up to a point. The other side of that coin is that people who live in these desperate straits very often turn to self-medication and all manner of at-risk behavior in order to open their eyes on another day.”

In addition to director Haskell Fitz-Simons, the show's creative team includes choreographer J. Michael Beech, musical director Julie Florin, assistant to the director Jessica Ann Heironomous, technical director Jim Zervas, scenic and lighting designer Rick Young, costume designer Vicki Olson, properties mistress Ann Marie Crosmun, sound designers Becca Easley and Todd Houseknecht, and stage manager Lucinda Gainey.

Fitz-Simons says, “I think I get Cabaret better now than I got it all those years ago, and I wanted another chance to do it. But it's an amazing way of telling a story in musical theater -- to have those musical numbers, on the one hand, mirroring what's going on in reality. The script is top notch, the music is incredible, and it references the era so beautifully.

“If there had not been a Kurt Weill,” claims Fitz-Simons, “there could not have been a Cabaret. I wouldn't want to revisit every show I've ever done, but this one is very special to me.... It's an era that's always been compelling to me, the whole phenomenon of the Holocaust, how in the world that ever could have happened is extremely compelling material ... and, goodness knows, we have had a wealth of literature on that subject. But I think [Cabaret] is one of the most powerful treatments of the Holocaust for the theater, especially as far as musical theater is concerned, and it doesn't pull any punches.”

He adds, “Because of the sort of dual world [of Cabaret], you've got to have A++ nightclub performers, singing and dancing, often at the same time.... Cabaret takes place in Berlin, and the vast major of characters are native German speakers. So, just about everybody has to have a credible German accent, so that takes a lot of coaching. In this production, there's a fair amount of German spoken. So, when the German characters are speaking to each other, they speak German....”

Director Haskell Fitz-Simons says, “The set is a unit set reminiscent of underground architecture of Berlin at the time. There are bricks and high-up windows. To me, it looks a little like those clubs where The Beatles got their start in Hamburg. It has a sort of lower-depths-German feel to it. In some ways, it doesn't always make perfect architectural sense. [Our set] is sort of a collage of architectural ideas ... mirroring the style of some of the German Expressionistic painters, which I think the lighting reflects as well.”

He adds, “The costumes, of course, are clothes for people economically challenged in the 1930s, so they are rarely designer-gown-type things. [Costume designer] Vicki [Olson] is showing how people made do with what they had.”

Raleigh Little Theatre presents Cabaret Friday-Saturday, June 5-6, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, June 7, at 3 p.m.; Thursday-Saturday, June 11-13, 18-20, and 25-27, at 8 p.m.; Sunday, June 14, 21, and 28, at 3 p.m. in its Cantey V. Sutton Main Stage Theatre. $18 ($15 students are up to and including college and seniors 62+), except $10 on June 7th and special $10 onstage seating (sold via the box office only). 919/821-3111 or click here. NOTE 1: Arts Access, Inc. of Raleigh, NC (http://www.artsaccessinc.org/) will audio-describe the 3 p.m. June 7th performance. NOTE 2: All shows are wheelchair accessible, and assistive-listening devices are available for all shows. RALEIGH LITTLE THEATER: http://raleighlittletheatre.org/performances/08-09/cabaret.html. INTERNET BROADWAY DATABASE: http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3348 (1966 original version) and http://www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=4848 (1998 revival). INTERNET MOVIE DATABASE: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068327/.

You are here: Home > Reviews and articles about the theatre's productions > Preview of Cabaret