On seeing “Cabaret” in Berlin

I just saw “Cabaret” in Berlin: I’m trying to think of another major musical for which the city location in which you’d see it would carry as much dramatic weight. “Oliver!” In London or “Can Can” in Paris would be charming, but expected; “Chicago” in Chicago would make for a good t-shirt, but mostly the razzmatazz would play the same as it would in Salt Lake City.

But “Cabaret” in Berlin, steps away from the Reichstag and next to the city’s immense Tiergarten park? For a longtime fan of the show and composers Kander and Ebb, it sounded thrilling, irresistible. And even though I had only three days in the city, which like most of Europe has been experiencing a historic heatwave, I didn’t hesitate to buy a ticket. (And I felt sure I would be also granted an air-conditioned haven.)

As it turns out, “Cabaret” has rarely been given a full production in the city which features so prominently as its setting, and of course in the source material, Christopher Isherwood’s “Berlin Stories.” And now through September 23rd, the zirkus tent theater Tipi am Kanzleramt is offering a fully staged “Cabaret” in a bar-and-restaurant setting that drips with classic German glamour.

Seeing the film “Cabaret” in 1972, when I was an early teen and accompanied by my whole family, I remember feeling electrified. Liza Minelli’s wide eyes mirrored mine; her every move was magnetic to me. I didn’t know what to do with Joel Grey as the Emcee, who fascinated and frightened me in equal measures. I was bored with previous movie musicals I was dragged to in those days — “The Sound of Music” or “Camelot” — but this was something different; even at fourteen I could tell that the songs performed on the Kit Kat Club’s stage doubled as commentary on the rise of Nazism. I didn’t yet know what to make of the reasons that Bob Fosse’s camera circled around Sally Bowles and her two male suitors as equals in a heady, drunken dance, and what it meant that the record they were listening to went silent, yet they still kept dancing. But something inside me knew, or wanted to know more. Contrasting that sense of sexual liberation with the approaching restrictive fascism of the Third Reich is one of the film’s key tensions, and director Bob Fosse leaves you with a stunning ending in which the camera scans the mirrored audience at the cabaret tables, resting on the patrons who now wear red armbands. I couldn’t stop thinking about it or talking about it for days afterward; it was an artistic, political and sexual awakening for me all at the same time, and I went home and cut out the black-and-white newspaper ads for the movie and put them above my dresser.

The film and the play have significant differences, but they trade in the same themes, and having seen both by now, my head was filled with memories and anticipation. Knowing I was seeing the show that night informed my walk through the Schoneburg area, where I saw the El Dorado location of the club Isherwood based the Kit Kat on (it’s now a market) and then to number 17 Nollenstraße, where Isherwood lived and met the characters he would later incorporate into “Berlin Stories.” I walked for blocks thinking of the victims commemorated in the abstract “fields of stone” at the devastating Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and across the street at Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism. Of course it was easy to imagine that some of the beloved characters in “Cabaret” met their eventual fates in a concentration camp.

And that’s how I arrived at the Tipi theater, with my mind reeling. My body was overheated from walking several kilometers in humid air, my mind was steaming with tendrils of thought comparing the pre-war Berlin and the rise in fascist bigotry today. On a more immediate basis, I hoped against hope that this very structured white tent would have cool air inside. But if you know 90 percent of Europe’s buildings, you know the answer to that. Aside from a swamp cooler or two, we sat in a swanky but sweltering dinner club, and any waft of breeze would have to come from fanning yourself with the menu. Well, I comforted myself, the better to relate to the discomforts of a 1930s Berlin smoky nightclub.

The director Vincent Patterson, known for his long career directing tours and videos for Michael Jackson, Madonna and Björk, takes full advantage of the restaurant setting. Performers enter from various parts of the nightclub floor and flirt with the audience. The small band sits visibly just to the side of the stage. Patterson’s work as a choreographer is inventive and economical; every movement has precision and clarity, particularly in the Kit Kat numbers. “Cabaret” has morphed and morphed with various revivals, with new directors putting their stamp and interpretation; it’s become the “Hamlet” of musicals. The film and play scores have cross-pollinated by now, and even purist productions freely borrow songs that were in the film but not the original 1966 Broadway version. This one borrows “Mein Herr” and a dynamite version of “Maybe This Time.”

The film and play have similar contours and turning points, but there are notable differences in the plot threads and character list. In the play, Cliff is an American writer newly arrived to Berlin who is drafted into giving English lessons to the German Ernst, who in turn leads him to the boarding house run by an exasperated and strict landlady, Fräulein Schneider. The quiet Cliff is a more appealing tenant than neighboring Fräulein Kost, a sex worker with a steady stream of clients. Fräulein Schneider is gradually courted by Herr Schultz, a local shop owner who is Jewish, and she’s tempted to take the “last chance” on love that he offers. Cliff meanwhile is gradually besotted by the British performer Sally Bowles, the star of the local Kit Kat Club, a cabaret meant to signify 1930s decadence (though in a more modern light, the “seedy” aspects may actually feel more like “sex positive” modern performance art.) Sally seeks stardom and sees the Kit Kat as a stepping stone but for a while takes refuge in the security of an impetuous relationship with Cliff. Eventually Sally’s focus on her dreams of stardom and refusal to see the ascent of Hitler’s tyranny around her, even as Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz are attacked, reveal her as a tragic and delusional figure, and the writer Cliff reflects on the surreal cabaret that social life has become in and out of the theater. The song “Cabaret”, with its “life is a cabaret, old chum/come to the cabaret” lyrics are often performed out of context as an invitation to live, live, live, but in fact it’s full of icy irony.

The stage musical gives the storyline between the older landlady and store owner a lot of time, and this production especially emphasized it, clearly commenting on the need to be vigilant to anti-Semitism and bigotry. But dramatically, it meant that the play felt long at times; there was something off in the timing, and act one ended right about the time it felt like the whole play should have. (When you’re sweating in your seat and your bier has turned lukewarm, every moment counts.) Cliff and Sally’s story seemed to get shorter shrift, biding time until Sally’s galvanizing musical moments in the second act.

Sally was played by Sophie Berner, whose amazingly fit dancer’s body is put on display by a skimpy costume near the start of the show and although her physique was a muscular marvel, it was also a bit of an anachronistic distraction. Gradually, though, Berner skillfully deteriorated her posture and strong voice by the end, to the point where her version of the 11 o’clock song “Cabaret” is drug-addled and near-whispered. Oliver Urbanski as the Emcee was impressive, but curiously saddled with a long black, silver-studded coat for most of the night. It felt German-punk-chic, but not particularly sexy. In fact, this Emcee didn’t exude danger or sexual charisma, which seemed a strange choice for this particular city’s production; Berlin has reclaimed its sexual tolerance and permissiveness with few concessions to shame, and it seemed a missed opportunity not to have a more erotic, rather than just naughty, cabaret to reflect that.

The advertising for the show indicated it was friendly to international, English-speaking audiences, but it became clear that in reality, with the exception of a few songs, the show would be all in German, with no subtitles projected. The cast did an excellent job of gesturing just broadly enough to communicate the plot of the play, but you definitely had an advantage if you were familiar with the stage version. Certainly hearing the music hall numbers sung in German, and in this literal supper-club setting, felt authentic.

But where the production seemed to achieve its full potential in synthesizing its theatrical and actual settings came at the end of act one. The main characters gather at an engagement party for Fräulein Schneider and Herr Schultz, and the otherwise daft Fräulein Kost tries to avoid eviction for her prostitution by blackmailing the couple with what she knows about Schultz’ Jewish identity. A previously comic but mercenary character chillingly shows her cunning desperation to survive, and it seems to unhinge her. The exceptional Jacqueline MacCauley as Kost begins to cajole the party on stage to join her in singing the sweet-sounding but chilling “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” The double-edged song carries a strong whiff of nationalism, and Kost turns from the characters onstage and starts insisting we in the audience sing-along. (In the film, this song is started by a handsome young man with an angelic voice in a country garden, gradually shown to be one of the Hitler Youth, and in more modern revivals, it is not sung live but the Emcee plays it on a gramophone.)

The audience is hesitant to join the Fräulein — the fourth wall has been broken, and that’s often awkward. Sudden sing-alongs are hard for an audience that’s been passive. But MacCauley won’t let us off the hook, and grows more and more deranged in her insistence that we sing, and sing loudly. Even a person unfamiliar with the show can pick up on the song’s intended association with Nazism, but surely a German audience would be acutely aware. Should we be “good” theatergoers and good Germans? Should we “follow orders” to sing, or leave the anthem alone? You could see the crowd’s conflicted feelings on their faces, confronted and confused, and when the music swelled again and Kost cajoled even more, the audience relented and began to sing like we were in a beer hall. Social embarrassment, or intellectual exercise, or an illustration of the human tendency to follow directions from an authority figure? In an instant an essential truth about how fascism could rise so quickly was demonstrated. This is what a great musical can do and it was one of the most shocking moments of my theater-going life.

The production chose to go with the more traditional ending, with the characters surrounding Cliff as he sits on a train, the writer’s imagination illustrated by stage tableau. Other productions have made the likely concentration camp fate of the play’s characters more explicit, having them shed their stage costumes at the very end to reveal striped prison garb. Perhaps Patterson felt the connections are clear enough they don’t have to be pushed. I’m not sure of his intentions but the last moments of the play, well-staged as they were, felt like a letdown. I’d love to have seen an end staging that was as challenging as that sensational end to act one.

Leaving the theater into some barely cool night air, I walked by the Brandenburg gates, which now serve as a major selfie location, but which still are beautifully lit and speak of international friendship. In this night glow, with global tourists interacting warmly, it was easy to feel that “Cabaret” is a history lesson about a time safely ensconced in the past and not to be repeated.

But the next day, I was chatting with a man in a cafe about suggestions for touring, and he went out of his way to be helpful, as had so many of the Berliners I’d encountered. But somehow the topic of migration came up, and this kind coffee companion became another person, full of anger about how the immigrants were dirtying the local swimming pools, increasing crime and a social burden upon law-abiding Germans — cliche anti-immigrant sentiments he delivered with a fervor that was unnerving. The city overwhelmingly carries a feel of social tolerance and acceptance, and yet a friend living in Berlin told me about a night when she was working in a bar and an otherwise charming patron gradually began to reveal he was a Holocaust denier. What lies beneath is seldom truly dormant.

In my hotel room I scrolled through news from home in America of children strapped to chairs in detention centers, crying for their deported parents. Of white supremacists meeting with the President, of that president’s tweets insulting the intelligence of African-Americans, of Nazis planning marches in the streets, of a government fomenting embattlement with the press. Tyrants are trying to silence prophets and poets and tell us which song lyrics we must stand and sing, and which we should not. This production of “Cabaret” felt like it was not just in its correct setting, but tragically, in its once-again correct time. The discomforting heat in theaters and city streets we sweated through this summer is likely to get worse, but our focus is turned away from the planet and like Sally, onto distractions that may spell our dissolution.

The song from “Cabaret” that most echoed in my head as I boarded my own train home from Berlin was not the titular one we all know, but the disturbing one which brought down the first half. For our global next act, we can only wonder: Who does tomorrow belong to, today?