Reviewed 9/10/04
Phoenix Theatre’s Artistic Director Michael Barnard has done it again: he has found a way to roll back a revision and still create an excellent production of a recently remounted classic. In his re-reinvention of Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, Gregory Jaye’s Kit Kat Klub is no longer a lacquered black and silver dive, but a lush dark wood and burgundy club that could be in the heart of Edwardian London. Once again, the girls really are beautiful, and the orchestra is as professional as they come. Be assured though that in this pretty-to-look-at production, subtlety allows for the inevitable darkness of the conclusion. This is to the credit of Barnard, who has found a way to please his blue-haired base while keeping lovers of the dark quite satisfied.
Barnard
has mixed old and new in keeping some of Sam Mendes changes but balancing
them in ways that avoid putting off the easily squeamish.
Cliff (Caleb Reese) is still waveringly bisexual, though
when the much less overtly any-sexual Emcee (Robert Kolby Harper)
sings of two ladies, there are indeed two ladies (Shawna Quain and Katie
O’Brien, all pictured right)
who join him rather than one Kit Kat Girl and one unexplained Kit Kat Boy.
This is a more
sexually tame, brassier Berlin, but in this scrubbed world, windows betray
the encroachment of Tomorrow in the form of Swastika-bearing storm troopers.
The effect is surprisingly nearly as powerful as the squalor of the revision.
The
missing overt-sexuality is replaced by grandness, humor, and opulence. The return to
the valley of triple-threat Sarah Wolter (pictured left)
perfectly exemplifies this in her offering as Sally Bowles. She is nuclear
energy personified.
Wolter speaks like a British midlander on a cocaine binge, her tall flapper-body,
limbs akimbo, flying through each scene while belting her songs and running
through the gamut of their emotions with a crazed presentationalism belying
Sally’s fear of normalcy. However, there’s nothing strictly sexy
about her performance; her success comes from energy, not the provocative.
Wolter proves that great performers are being bred in the Valley, but must
inevitably leave for more consistent and profitable work.
Harper’s Emcee gives a few hints at the titillating, but he is more about ironic commentary and breathtaking farcical comedy. His dancing as created by he and Barnard is a Fosse-esque workout that is quite fun to witness. His singing voice seems a bit strained from all of the requirements, but he can kick in the boffo cutting aside with the best of them. Reese’s Cliff (pictured above) is a great creation. His character’s naiveté and convictions are not pushed too hard, and his quite pleasant voice is a nice balance to Wolter.
Betsy Beard’s Fraülein Schneider and Mike Lawler’s Herr Shultz are convincingly performed. Their voices show flaws, but they are quite earnest in their performances and connect with each other and those around them. Terey Summers takes her miscasting as Fraülein Kost and successfully turns the character into a comic cutup. Beau Heckman is an amiable Ernst and morphs quite nicely into a baddie.
The ensemble is the usual collection of talent who are strong in dance, powerful in voice, and who never drop their level of commitment to the scene they are in. They uniformly propel themselves through Barnard’s successful brand of Fosse movement. Rather than choosing to directly involve the orchestra into the show, Barnard has tucked Alan Ruch and his strong musicians up above and Stage Left, dressing them in blacks and letting them concentrate flawlessly on the music rather than asking them to do double duty.
Jaye’s set is initially flummoxing, but it’s multiple and often clever transformations and its subtle changes through the show make up for the initially wrong-seeming impressions. This Kit Kat Klub has quite a budget for smoke and isolation spots, but Michael J. Eddy’s lighting transcends the overwhelming to become its own strong commentary. Cari Smith’s costumes are all interesting, if rather well-kept-for-the-setting creations. David Temby’s sound ran into a few notable hitches on opening night, but should be smoothed over through the run. Though I hate to sound like an esteemed colleague, I must say that Manuela Needhammer’s wigs, especially those for the Kit Kat Girls, are excruciatingly wig-like; I’d like to have seen less obviousness in their choices. Her makeup choices are equally unsubtle, though that is more understandable in the realm of Barnard’s other levels of theatricality.
I may complain from time to time about the inherent audience-pleasing tendencies of Phoenix Theatre, but when you do something well, why not do it often. I congratulate Barnard and his cast and crew for finding a balance that drew everyone, myself included, to offer a standing ovation on opening night.
