As the first drum roll of “Cabaret” hits, the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club welcomes the Guthrie Theater’s audience to leave our troubles outside.
“Here, life is beautiful,” Jo Lampert’s Emcee says, urging us to forget our troubles. But anyone familiar with Germany in the 1930s knows that danger is waiting beyond the nightclub’s walls.
The show, which debuted in 1966, has always been a slow burn, taking much of the first act to follow American writer Cliff Bradshaw, here played by Jason Forbach. He is searching for a story to tell, and finds it among the citizens of Berlin.
In some respects, this “Cabaret” is like others that preceded it, including the 1972 film it inspired. The costumes are era appropriate, the scenery is grand — though sometimes dwarfing the actors — and we are treated to catchy earworms like “Don’t Tell Mama” and “Mein Herr.”
The Guthrie shifts the intermission, with mixed results. The change allows us to see more into the lives of the characters, including a love story between a Jewish fruit seller, Herr Schultz, and a boarding house owner, Fräulein Schneider. This is aided by chemistry between actors Remy Auberjonois and Michelle Barber, both Guthrie veterans.
While this does break the flow there is still a sense of discontent that lurks amongst the outlandish numbers featuring the scantily clad Kit Kat Club dancers. Ernst Ludwig, a political activist, tries to share his cause, but Cliff refuses, saying, “Whatever it is, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
After all, in here “life is beautiful.”
The second act starts with a sense of unease, as authoritarianism pushes into the club’s once-safe walls. This is where the stomach churning begins, and where director Joseph Haj showcases his ability to build tension on stage.
In the engagement party scene, Ernst openly insults Herr Schultz for being Jewish. At first, it’s shocking to hear this from Ernst, played by Sasha Andreev with a jolly, carefree air. When confronted about his vile politics, Ernst is confused, saying, “What does it matter, we’re friends?”
Eventually, the rousing song “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” builds to a frightening stage tableau as the cast salutes Hitler and a vision of a new Germany.
Even as the Kit Kat Klub mocks the Nazis, it can’t hold back the tide of nationalism spreading through the country.
The Guthrie's choice to stage “Cabaret” at a time when authoritarianism is on the rise across the globe is not lost in the glitz and glamour of live theater. The show’s central theme — that avoiding politics has consequences — grows stronger when the audience sees how escape into entertainment can leave people passive, forced to watch as fascism rises.
Throughout the musical, we hear the growing sound of a train. At first, it's the light chug of the locomotive that brings Cliff into Germany. It then picks up its pace at the end of act one, and by act two, we feel it careening towards us, and we know that eventually, the Nazis amass more power.
By the play's end, we know characters like the Emcee and Herr Schultz will be marked with pink triangles and yellow stars, then rounded up into ghettos.
It is hard not to see that the show draws parallels to the silencing of those deemed “undesirables” by current authoritarian governments.
As the musical ends, Haj’s train metaphor returns one final time.
Cliff Bradshaw, the American writer who has witnessed Germany’s fall to the Nazis, sells his typewriter to purchase a ticket to Paris. He hauntingly reflects on how he was asleep to the signs of fascism. But Cliff can walk away, ready to write a bestseller about his Berlin years.
Others will be forced onto a different kind of train, shipped off to their deaths at camps like Dachau and Auschwitz.
And as the trains leave the station, “Cabaret” asks its audience what train they will be on, should fascism win.
“Cabaret” runs at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis through Aug. 24.
