Presented by the Kit Kat Club at the August Wilson Theatre
Based on the play by John van Druten and stories by Christopher Isherwood
Book by Joe Masteroff
Music by John Kander
Lyrics by Fred Ebb
Directed by Rebecca Frecknall
Fight direction by Thomas Schall
Music direction by Meghann Zervoulis Bate
Choreographed by Julia Cheng
Tickets are available now – March 2025
August Wilson Theatre
245 W. 52nd St.
New York, NY
2 hours and 45 minutes, including one intermission
Critique by Kitty Drexel
I was offered press tickets to “Cabaret” as part of the ATCA conference in New York.
NEW YORK — “I’ll be watching ‘Cabaret’ for survival tactics,” my friend Julia said when I confirmed her ticket for “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” on November 6. Julia and I are both gleefully queer on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum and terrified by the national and state election results. It was cathartic to watch a musical about the rise and tragic fall of queer culture in Weimar Germany as the Nazis rose to power. It looks a lot like the U.S. today. If one needs proof, they should take to their local news sources.
Performances of “Cabaret” are likely to pop up in regional theaters soon. Some of them will get this musical wrong. “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” at the August Wilson Theatre gets it right. Word has correctly spread about the set, makeup and costume design by Tom Scutt. He has remodeled the August Wilson to look richly Bohemian like a fancypants nightclub in 1931s Berlin. In there everything is beautiful: the contorting, androgynous dancers on pedestals in the preshow, the themed cocktails in the bar and the plush seating in the theater proper. We could be in Germany or we might be in Bohemia (Prague). We could be anywhere.
Director Rebecca Frecknall and choreographer Julia Cheng’s staging took a modern approach to this period within a period piece. Dancers krumped and performed acrobatics and code switched to more traditional musical theater-style moves. Actors tread the boards in modern mint green and bubblegum pink costumes that evoked period fashions without obeying them. The loose costumes and Doc Martens allowed the actors to execute staging with modern American freedom. In the 1930s, people were hindered by girdles, cinched buttons and sturdy trouser legs. Our actors could slouch in their seats and crouch near the floor as the audience watched them in the round.
Ayla Ciccone-Burton played Sally Bowles in that performance. Auli’i Cravalho was hopefully somewhere living her best life with people who support and love her. (Hawai’i went for Harris, but Hawai’i is so far away.) It is startling that Ciccone-Burton was the cover. Were this production anywhere other than Broadway, she’d be leading the cast. Her dialogue was crisp, her accent believable, and her dancing prophetic. Ciccone-Burton portrayed Sally as a woman determined to create a career despite her challenges: predatory producers, poverty, loneliness, language differences and, last but not least, having a uterus in a society that hates empty and full uteruses in adult women. She wasn’t abandoning hope for a more conservative lifestyle but actively choosing the cabaret circuit.
This choice is subtle but most present when Ciccone-Burton kicks and punches her way through the title song, “Cabaret.” Sally isn’t demure; she isn’t mindful. She is an angry woman expressing her angst to a crowded room of people who don’t see her pain. Sally cannot stop the forces of fascism that would kill her career when she is so close to her success; she cannot prevent her steadfast lover from leaving Berlin; she cannot reduce herself to someone who would want to follow Hitler or her lover out of Berlin. It’s tragic and Ciccone-Burton performs it so beautifully we sympathize with a selfish, materialistic woman-child.
Adam Lambert does a commendable job as the Emcee. He should do more musical theatre. Vocal coaches and teachers can only do so much. They set Lambert up for success with voice and acting lessons, but Lambert’s presence, voice, acting and execution are all his own.
“Cabaret” is not a new musical. Theatres big and small have been performing it for decades. So, it was with complete shock that I watched the post-election audience holler and clap after the Nazi anthem “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” Lambert sings it unaffectedly and with simplicity. It is a pretty song that he sings prettily despite its abhorrent white nationalist connotations. But, folks who hate fascism shouldn’t clap at this song. They are clapping for white nationalist fascism oligarchs.
Here’s why you shouldn’t clap: Nazism rose to power by perverting Germany’s folkloric traditions to encourage nationalist hate towards intellectuals, disabled folk, homosexuals, Romani and, of course, Jewish people. On the outside, “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” appears to be a pretty song about a hopeful future. One has to know of Germany’s folk song tradition to understand that the native Germans singing this song are hopeful because they intend to take Germany back from immigrants and non-Aryans through genocide. (You can’t win freedom if you are already more free than the people you are murdering.) If this sounds familiar to Americans, it should. Conservatives used these tactics in 2016 and this year’s presidential campaign.
“Tomorrow Belongs to Me” comes at the end of Act 1. By then, you’ve already expressed your appreciation for the show’s earlier performances with your enthusiastic clapping. So, clapping for this song tells the people around you that you support fascism. Please don’t do that.
During the prologue (don’t miss the prologue!), I experienced a strong wave of existential dread for my friends, found family and our country. I bought a second cocktail and consumed it in a corner while I took in the glorious queerness radiating from the room’s performers. It was dark and warm like a womb in there. I want safer queer spaces to survive through 2029. I cried because I’m afraid they won’t.
Straights and straight conservatives consume our art and use us as inspiration, but they won’t support us when they vote. They don’t see the correlation between their vote and our rights. They are connected. Our friends and family can’t say they love us and mean it if their actions support politicians who work to disenfranchise us. If you have the opportunity to calmly inform a conservative voter why and how we are threatened by the next administration, please do. This is one of the ways we will keep fascism out of office when it comes time to vote for the next president.
Regional productions of “Cabaret” will not be as effortfully cool and maximalist as the one playing in New York. They don’t have to be. But, if you’re in the big city and have a chunk of cash for tickets and a beverage or three, go ahead. The production is worth seeing. Tip your queer waitstaff well.
