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Cabaret
by John Kander, Fred Ebb and Joe Masteroff
Directed by Oanh Nguyen
Musically Directed by Dean Anderson
Choreographed by Kelly Todd

Back Stage West Critic's Pick

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THEATER REVIEW

Life is breezy and carefree as ever inside the Kit Kat Klub, so come experience Cabaret
by Anne-Margret Bellavoine, Northern Lights

July 4, 2005

Chance's summer staging of Kander and Ebb's timeless favorite Cabaret is simply fabulous entertainment. Oanh Nguyen directs the musical, imbuing Joe Masteroff's book with a dark patina.

Berlin in the thirties was a time of decadence, with ordinary people precariously poised against the precipice that would swallow them in the form of the rise of Nazism.

Cabaret has a long European tradition of sensual pleasure in a carefree atmosphere, with beautiful show girls, pulpous chanteuses and outrageous emceeing. Chance captures all this with a line-up of great dancers in scanty lingerie.

Beach Vickers lends his grizzly conspiratorial bonhommie to the role of the Emcee, cajoling us into joining young American writer Clifford Bradshaw (Casey Long) out from the cold and into the intimate warmth of the Kit Kat Klub.

Cliff meets Ernst Ludwig (Michael Irish) on a train from Paris, who provides him with lodgings and an entry into Berlin nightlife.

Marina Coffee is Fraulein Schneider, the mature landlady who ekes a living renting rooms to shady characters such as Fraulein Kost (Clarissa Barton) who finances her rent with overnight visits.

At the Kit Kat Klub, Cliff meets Sally Bowles (Erika C. Miller), a British performer with a dissipated lifestyle hoping for a big break. ...

Cliff and Ernst clash over their disagreement on the politics of Germany, while Sally and Cliff fight over the realities of earning a living and where, with Paris and America the two best tickets to freedom out.

Long and Miller exude exciting youthful chemistry against the gentle pair of Coffee and Koppel.

Dean Anderson, also Max, the Kit Kat Klub's owner, provides the musical direction performed with a live jazz ensemble. Kelly Todd choreographed the steamy chorus girl numbers. Clarissa Barton and Erika C. Miller created the wardrobe of vintage lingerie.

Some great numbers are owed to the movie, such as 'Money' and 'Mein Herr'. Four different versions mark Cabaret's evolution as a Broadway musical and its various revivals. Perennial favorites include Sally Bowles' 'Don't Tell Mama' and 'Cabaret', with the trilingual 'Wilkommen' bookending the musical by the Emcee. Poignant are the touching messages of love exchanged between aging lovers Herr Schultz and Fraulein Schneider.

Underlying the tawdry and decadent world of cabarets is the ominous rise of Nazi Germany and the tacit acceptance or insouciant dismissal by German folk like Schultz himself, the more tragic viewed through the corrective lens of its ultimate historical development, the end of Berlin as an artificial paradise.
But why sit alone in the dark, when the party is going full swing still - leave your own troubles at home and come be seduced at the cabaret.

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THEATER REVIEW

Cabaret Critic's Pick
by Shirle Gottlieb, Back Stage West

July 6, 2005

As its name implies, The Chance Theater dares to take chances, and the results can be astonishing—especially for a black box operation located in Anaheim working on a shoestring budget. Currently playing is a gut-wrenching production of the John Kander, Fred Ebb, and Joe Masteroff masterpiece. Since this 1966 smash-hit musical walked off Broadway with eight Tonys, it has gone through revivals, been adapted into an award-winning movie, and had many sanitized interpretations.

This production, however, has a foreboding tone, bordering on menacing. Under the forceful vision of director Oanh Nguyen, the ensemble captures the decadence of pre-Nazi Berlin in the ominous Kit Kat Klub, a cabaret where everything is for sale, including people's lives. The tragedy unfolds to the harsh decadent strains of live musicians behind a scrim on John Robinson's tawdry set under Tonya Moake's piercing light design.

The die is cast from the first song, when the Emcee belts out "Wilkommen" surrounded by scantily clad Kit Kat Girls. Kudos to choreographer Kelly Todd for her erotic dance routines that are carried out with wild abandon around the stars of the show. Never has there been a more frightening portrayal of Emcee than Beach Vickers' no-holds-barred, depraved interpretation. There he stands, bellowing into the dark: a fat, white-faced, bloated, and corseted figure, with torn fishnet stockings and tattooed arms. When Vickers sings "If You Could See Her" and "I Don't Care Much," it makes our blood curdle.

Erika C. Miller's dynamic portrayal of the English free spirit, Sally Bowles, is intoxicating. From "Don't Tell Mama" through "Cabaret," Miller captivates the audience with excellent performance skills. Supporting roles are also well-done. The tender Marina Coffee and endearing Glenn Koppel play old lovers Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz; Michael Irish shines as the intellectual Nazi; and Casey Long is thoughtful as Cliff, the quiet American author who experiences the sordid scene, then wakes up and leaves Berlin before the inevitable happens.

"Cabaret," presented by and at The Chance Theater, 5552 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim. Thu.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Jul. 1-Aug. 14. $22-40. (714) 777-3033.

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THEATER REVIEW

'Cabaret' is darkly inviting
 Anaheim production retains vicious potency of the musical's many revival stagings.
by Eric Marchese, Special to the Register

July 8, 2005

After so many years, and so many revivals of the 1966 original, is there really much more that can be said, or written, about, "Cabaret"?

Perhaps not. As a visit to the Chance Theater reveals, though, Joe Masteroff's salty, sexually frank libretto depicting the dark, often sour tale of a seedy Berlin nightclub at the dawn of the Nazi regime can still surprise us - and, as familiar as John Kander and Fred Ebb's score is by now, many of the show's songs retain the nasty potency of a sucker punch.

Director Oanh Nguyen's stylized staging brings out the viciousness inherent in the musical's roots as the John Van Druten drama "I Am a Camera," itself based on Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical "Berlin Stories." The Kit Kat Klub may seem the hottest, most happenin' nightspot in town - but, as Nguyen and company aptly interpret their material, it's a black hole that devours all in its path.

That has always been the dark appeal of "Cabaret." The Tony-winning 1987 and 1998 revivals wrought changes that include the addition of Kit Kat Boys alongside the girls, and more than a hint that the visiting American writer Clifford Bradshaw is less sexually naive than he appears. These new shadings simply enhance concepts that 40 years ago were, of necessity, not text, but subtext.

What Nguyen and company bring to the table is the same unblinking look at mankind's baser instincts that informed the Chance's recent production of "Porcelain." Decadence and depravity reign at this "Cabaret," from coke-snorting to smuggling to whoring, symbolic of a culture so self-obsessed, it paid the Nazi threat little regard.

Representing American idealism is Clifford (Casey Long), fresh off the boat from Pennsylvania. It's true he may swing both ways, but he can still discern right from wrong. Balancing him is Sally Bowles (Erika C. Miller), the Klub's only British chanteuse, who fancies herself as far more alluring to men than she actually is, and finds nothing in life worth taking seriously.

Sally is the most healthy-looking of a gaunt, emaciated lineup of chorus girls and boys who come off as fittingly vampirish. Their ringleader, of course, is the stark, grotesque figure of the Emcee, played by Beach Vickers as a bloated, eccentric lecher with a frozen leer. Vickers invokes much of his role through mime, yet he adds a grim, pained layer to this familiar figure. Like a depraved, silent Greek chorus, he and the Kit Kat boys and girls are never far from the story's action.

With her polished English accent, Miller's Sally brims with false bravado and is a shameless manipulator of others (read: Clifford) lest she be manipulated first. Singing "Perfectly Marvelous," Miller is perfectly, marvelously winning, her Sally a mercurial persona who changes with each scene - softly seductive, forlorn and wistful for "Maybe This Time," a defiant, saucy minx for the title song, a pathetic waif as the play winds to its conclusion.

Long's stammering, polite Cliff isn't in Berlin long before he grows disgusted with himself for succumbing to hedonism rather than tending to his writing - and is in utter disbelief that few around him can see the storm clouds of fascism. By the time the ugly events of "Cabaret" have run their course, he's crushed, defeated and numb to all feeling.

Marina Coffee is a stocky, careworn Fraulein Schneider, at once sad, defiant, stoic and fatalistic as a woman who fears marrying a Jew will rain ruin on her head. As her suitor, Herr Schultz, Glenn Koppel exudes quiet self-confidence and, before the affair shatters, giddiness.

Michael Irish is ever credible as the quietly oily Ernst Ludwig, a dedicated Nazi partisan struggling to master English, all the more chilling for his mild-mannered demeanor. Clarissa Barton offers subtle comic relief as a promiscuous boarder sexually intimate with half the German navy, and Dean Anderson is coldly brutal as Max, the latest in Sally's string of abusive lovers.

Anderson's musical direction and the performance of the five-man onstage combo are crisp, and all of the musical numbers communicate subtlety beneath the surface, as when the English lyrics of the tender song "Married" are echoed in German.

The production team, which includes choreographer Kelly Todd, scenic design by John Robinson, lighting by Tonya Moake, sound design by Ron Wyand, costumes by Miller and Barton, dialect coaching by Glenda Morgan Brown, fight staging by Martin Noyes and stage management by Masako Tobaru, captures the tawdriness of the characters and their songs in a show whose final irony is that its depiction of a specific time and place makes it ever timeless.

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THEATER REVIEW

Surprising 'Cabaret'
Chance Theater production goes where the 1972 film dared not to go
by Christopher Trela, OC Metro

July 21, 2005

“Life is a cabaret, old chum, so come to the cabaret,” sings chanteuse Sally Bowles in the Kander and Ebb musical “Cabaret.” In this case, the sentiment fits: Come to Cabaret at the Chance Theatre in Anaheim Hills, because this tiny storefront operation is offering a well-staged, amazingly polished production of the 1966 Broadway hit that won a Tony Award for Best Musical.

If your only exposure to “Cabaret” comes from the 1972 Bob Fosse film version, you're in for a surprise, because on stage “Cabaret” is a decadent delight that goes where the film version dared not.

"Cabaret" is set in Berlin in the depression-era years leading up to World War II, when the city's cafe society was firmly entrenched in the decadence. Into this world comes Clifford Bradshaw (Casey Long), an American writer charmed by the Berlin lifestyle and by cabaret singer Sally Bowles (Erika C. Miller). He takes a room at a boarding house run by Fraulein Schneider (Marina Coffee), who, in turn, is charmed by local fruit seller Herr Schultz (Glenn Koppel). He, though, is Jewish, which is verbotten to the growing Nazi movement. The twists and turns these relationships take are observed by a caustic emcee (Beach Vickers), the master of ceremonies of the club and the play.

As the play begins and the emcee musically welcomes the audience (including patrons sitting at round cabaret tables in front of the standard, raked seating area) to the cabaret, the tone of the evening is set. This is a darkly humorous "Cabaret," well-paced and fluid, and full of subtle symbolism, deliciously raucous song and dance numbers, and a superb interpretation by Vickers, who, as the emcee, gleefully combines vaudeville shtick and ad-libs with a riveting stage presence that make it hard to take your eyes off of him. Not quite puppet master, but more than casual observer, Vickers toys with the audience and offers musical comments on the characters and their situations.

The entire cast is blessed with good voices, and the creative choreography is perfect within the context of the play. The staging, itself, is thoughtful and clever, with the sparse prop pieces serving to set the scene without letting the audience forget that the focus is not on the trappings, but on the story and the characters.

This “Cabaret” is full of integrity, style and substance, and offers a very rewarding and memorable evening of theater. It runs through Aug. 14.

For tickets, call (714) 777-3033, or visit www.chancetheater.com OCM

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