May 16–23, 1996

critical mass

Cabaret

Walnut St. Theatre, 9th & Walnut Sts., through June 9, 574-3550, ext. 4.

The time is 1929 in Berlin; the Nazis and the Communists are struggling for the minds and hearts of the German people. Decadence, intrigue, desperation. The Emcee (Charles Abbott) welcomes us to the Kit Kat Klub ("Willkommen" is one of the show's best songs) with sleazy, mesmerizing cynicism, setting the tone of the times.""

Clifford Bradshaw (Joel Carlton), a young American novelist, arrives at a boarding house run by Fraulein Schneider (Taina Elg), looking for Experience so that he has something to write about. Into his life comes Sally Bowles (Betsi Morrison), a young woman who sings and dances at the cabaret, living a life of self-destructive abandon. Their relationship is half the romantic plot; the other half is the love between Fraulein Schneider, a spinster, and her middle-aged boarder, Herr Schultz (Wil Love), who is a Jew. History — the show's real plot — overtakes them all.

Cabaret is a great piece of musical theater: it has terrific songs of many different kinds (lyrics by Fred Ebb), interesting music (John Kander), a plot that is actually about something rather than just a hey-kids-let's-put-on-a-show show; the characters are interesting, with enough ambiguous sex and sordid style to keep both the audience and all the designers happy. Joe Masteroff wrote the book from the play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten, which in turn was based on The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood. Isherwood's observant, chilling, noncommittal eye has unfortunately been replaced by director Bruce Lumpkin's heavy hand.

The Walnut's production of Cabaret, as directed by Lumpkin, is so slow that the whole production seems to be playing at the wrong speed; it's as though everybody (except Charles Abbott, as The Emcee, who carries the show with superb old-pro style) is singing underwater or talking to very young, slightly deaf children. The first act is nearly 1 3/4 hours long.

Most of the cast have good, satisfying voices and the costumes designed by Michael Bottari and Ronald Case are gorgeous, although rather too opulent to suggest the frantic poverty of the era. As Sally Bowles, the pivotal role, Betsi Morrison has adopted a supposed English accent that is distractingly Martian, and instead of projecting vacant, desperate innocence, she seems merely a cipher, a dope whose only charm is sex. When she finally delivers the song we've been waiting for, "Cabaret," she hams it up mercilessly, missing the whole ironic point.

This very edgy show has been dulled; it's still pretty good, but Cabaret should be great.

— Toby Zinman