Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club

This year, the novel "Goodbye to Berlin" celebrates its 85th anniversary. Such an event was marked by the new Broadway revival of the legendary musical "Cabaret", based on the book by Christopher Isherwood.

The novel, published in 1939, immerses readers into the atmosphere that reigned at the time - the rise of the Nazis to power. The life of Germans is rapidly changing, becoming miserable and scary. The main characters - are Fraulein Schneider, a boarding house hostess, and a young singer from England working in a local cabaret, Sally Bowles.

The Emcee as a character first appeared in the play "I Am a Camera" (1951), written as an adaptation of the novel by the English playwright John Van Druten. The play was an instant success. In musical theatre productions, the Emcee turned from a minor character into one of the main ones, as part of the action at the Kit Kat Club significantly expanded.

The Broadway premiere of the musical "Cabaret", with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, directed by Harold Prince, occurred in 1966. Joe Masteroff used both the play "I Am a Camera" and Isherwood’s novel as the basis for the book. The score included a series of divertissement numbers performed by cabaret artists (Willkommen, Don’t Tell Mama, Mein Herr, Two Ladies, Tomorrow Belongs to Me, Money, Cabaret, If You Could See Her, etc.), as well as lyrical solo arias (So What?, Don’t Go, Why Should I Wake Up?, Maybe This Time, What Would You Do?) and duets (Perfectly Marvelous, It Couldn’t Please Me More, Married, Meeskite). There have been four revivals on Broadway (1987, 1998, 2014, 2024). The show was also staged in the UK, France, Portugal, Argentina and Russia.

It is exciting to observe the transformation of the image of the Emcee over the span of nearly half a century, which manifested itself most vividly in the latest revival.

The first performer of the role of Emcee was Joel Grey. He also played the Emcee in Bob Fosse’s movie "Cabaret" and the first Broadway revival. Grey created a memorable image of the mysterious classic entertainer: the presenter, combining the numbers into a single whole and creating the mood of the nightly show. His first appearance in front of the audience sets the atmosphere of the evening - he is the first to greet the viewer, and he closes the show. The film features the tragicomic Joel Grey – a buffoon, a sage, a mocker reflected in crooked mirrors. Grey breaks through the “fourth wall”, mesmerizing the audience with a dead man’s smile.

In the next Broadway version of the musical "Cabaret", which Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall worked on, Emcee was played by Alan Cumming, who also returned to Broadway in the 2014 revival. Compared to his predecessor, Cumming was interacting with the cabaret performers, the audience even more and looked more eccentric.

In the Broadway revival of 2024 (directed by Rebecca Frecknall) the image of the Emcee portrayed by Eddie Redmayne has changed significantly. According to his words: “…he’s sort of the Shakespearean fool, the court jester who then becomes the King”. In Eddie’s performance, the character turns into a chameleon. First, he appears in a birthday cone hat, practically without makeup, and invites everyone to the party. Then - in a clown’s dark red suit, with a whited-out face, he is perceived as a buffoon, convincing guests that “life is beautiful.” Later, in a black jumpsuit – a skeleton with a Joker’s face – he looks ominous. The metamorphoses of the Emcee are so clear that in the Finale it is impossible to perceive him as a buffoon. The Joker grows out of the depths of the stage in front of the viewer, not the crime boss from comic books, but an epitome of Evil. In the context of the evolution of the image of Emcee in the new Broadway revival, we see a new incarnation of the Joker as an instrument of evil will.

The aesthetics of the production are very harmonious, including the immersive component: a long passageway that resembles an entrance to a semi-legal nightclub, where a visitor gets a stamp on the hand. A specially rebuilt space with a round stage at the center, spectators sitting at the tables around it, rows of chairs where the old stage used to be - create a single interior in which the story of the moral apocalypse unfolds, told by Christopher Isherwood aka Clifford Bradshaw – an eyewitness to the events in Germany in the early 30s. In the Finale, a reprise of "Willkommen" – the title song – sounds, and you leave the theater feeling that you have not just plunged into the past but have lived through a universal plot for all time: the past is disappearing, the future is coming inevitably. There is no hope that it will be better.