Mega Essays - Kit Kat Club Depiction of Cultural & Political Life in Germany up to 1933 The film cabaret shows the extremes of cultural and political life in Germany up to 1933 by the representation of Jews, women, the clubs, goals of life, as well as the representation of the communists, the Nazis, and general Hindenburg suggests that Weimar Germany's hedonism and indulgence by it's s... Wordcount: 943 Night 'How do the cabaret songs and routines comment on the social issues which are the background for the story of Cabaret?'Satirical on every level, Bob Fosse's 1972 film Cabaret redefines the previously accepted genre of the musical. Using the songs and routines as cunning tools of social commentary th... Wordcount: 1776 Overweight Americans Essay: Why do we in this country have a health problem with "overweight Americans"? Commercial ads provide pills, machines, clubs, diets and surgery, however, we are still the fattest population of people throughout the world. Why this is the reality and what suggestions can you provide to make us...

Wordcount: 702 Cabaret CabaretCabaret provides for its audience an animated and a uniquely exciting dramatization of Berlin, Germany just before the Second World War. The story of many Germans living in an uncertain world is shown through just a few characters. Life is a cabaret, or so the famed song goes. After watching... Wordcount: 1423 Cabaret essays 2 Pages 494 Words The Cabaret is a musical that takes place in the Kit Kat Club in Berlin in 1931 during Hitlers rise to power. The 2 main characters-Sally Bowles & Brian Roberts- were both Americans who traveled to Berlin with seperate dreams. Sally has high hopes and desires to move up the entertainment ladder. She lives each day hoping to break into the movies and each night performing at the Kit Kat Club. Brian is hunting for German students to whom he can teach English-to pay his rent. The setting of Cabaret, pre-war Germany, in inherently fascinating, because of the events occurring and what they led to. Society on all levels is in a state of instability, with extreme behavior being demonstrated in the political, commercial, and sexual areas.

This atmosphere of upheaval is extremely attractive to Sally because it provides her with somewhere that barriers can be broken. Fuelled by selfishness and a desire to better herself, she is content to sleep around, use others and do almost anything in pursuit of success. This hard shell is a mere impression though, and is easily punctured when things don’t turn out quite right and events spiral out of her control. In an analogous fashion, the nightclub maintains a similar illusion-that life on the inside is beautiful while chaotic and disorderly outside. The songs of Cabaret take this chaos one step further. Through effective application of an assortment of scenes, the stage routines provide a counterpart to ! real life drama. On example is when Fritz, a money hungry German, and Natalie, a wealthy Jewish woman, fall in love, the song “If you could See Her” is played on stage at the Cabaret. The Master of ceremonies dances with a gorilla professing his love of her to the audience. The last line of the song reads, ‘if you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.” Here it seems that the MC has fallen victim to Nazi philosophy. Throughout the entire ...

FREE Essay on The Cabaret in the Kit Kat Club The Cabaret in the Kit Kat Club 2 Pages 494 Words The Cabaret is a musical that takes place in the Kit Kat Club in Berlin in 1931 during Hitlers rise to power. The 2 main characters-Sally Bowles & Brian Roberts- were both Americans who traveled to Berlin with seperate dreams. Sally has high hopes and desires to move up the entertainment ladder. She lives each day hoping to break into the movies and each night performing at the Kit Kat Club. Brian is hunting for German students to whom he can teach English-to pay his rent. . The setting of Cabaret, pre-war Germany, in inherently fascinating, because of the events occurring and what they led to. Society on all levels is in a state of instability, with extreme behavior being demonstrated in the political, commercial, and sexual areas. This atmosphere of upheaval is extremely attractive to Sally because it provides her with somewhere that barriers can be broken. Fuelled by selfishness and a desire to better herself, she is content to sleep around, use others and do almost anything in pursuit of success.

This hard shell is a mere impression though, and is easily punctured when things don't turn out quite right and events spiral out of her control. In an analogous fashion, the nightclub maintains a similar illusion-that life on the inside is beautiful while chaotic and disorderly outside. The songs of Cabaret take this chaos one step further. Through effective application of an assortment of scenes, the stage routines provide a counterpart to !. real life drama. On example is when Fritz, a money hungry German, and Natalie, a wealthy Jewish woman, fall in love, the song "If you could See Her” is played on stage at the Cabaret. The Master of ceremonies dances with a gorilla professing his love of her to the audience. The last line of the song reads, 'if you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all.” Here it seems that the MC has fallen victim to Nazi philosophy. 'Cabaret' brings Kit Kat Club to Pantages Theater - StarTribune.com Stage & Arts 'Cabaret' brings Kit Kat Club to Pantages Theater REVIEW: Actor/singer Tyler Michaels invites you to the Kit Kat Club and stories about prewar Berlin.

January 20, 2014 — 2:13pm KYNDELL HARKNESS &#x2022; kyndell.harkness@startribune.com Graydon Royce @graydonroyce Hellooooo, Tyler Michaels! Or rather, “Wilkommen,” young man. You have shimmied your way into the gold club of Twin Cities musical theater performers. Michaels — with director Peter Rothstein goading him into a series of outrageous physical gags — minces and slinks, simmers and glares as the Master of Ceremonies of a little club called the Kit Kat. You know the place as that seedy, debauched hangout in Weimar Germany — the place where Christopher Isherwood found grist for stories that would be turned into “Cabaret.” Rothstein’s production “Cabaret” opened Saturday night at the Pantages Theatre with Michaels flying in out of nowhere and landing in the lap of a patron. Not a bad trick if your intent is to knock people off their assumptions about what’s fair game in theater.

The Emcee gets into the business of a few more audience members throughout the evening, trying to incorporate all of us into the notion that we are in the Kit Kat, in Berlin on the cusp of Hitler’s ascension, a part of the world stage. “Cabaret,” which has evolved through several iterations since opening in 1966, remains vexed by its dual nature — balancing a wild, Brechtian device full of camp with a fairly old-fashioned book musical. This tension still results in spiky glitter scenes and saggy patches of dialogue. Within the club, the action shakes with naughty excitement. There are songs, dance, fun, gaiety. Michael Matthew Ferrell’s choreography reflects the unrefined energy and the sweaty lust for life that defined the early 1930s in one of the world’s most delirious places. Denise Prosek drives an orchestra that “is beautiful.” Rich Hamson’s exquisite costumes spare little flesh from exposure as the dancers leap around Kate Sutton-Johnson’s dark glass-paneled set. Isherwood wrote of a British singer named Sally Bowles, a mediocre but somehow magnetic performer who hooked his heart a little.

Kira Lace Hawkins’ Sally devours her moment in the spotlight with a voice that is full of steel and emotional power. Her eyes and face radiate a confidence, her manner a sense of self-obsession. Hawkins’ Sally has a phoniness, a facade that is essential to understanding her vulnerability. As she walks off stage at one point near the play’s end, her shoulders slump with the knowledge that the game is over. Cabaret What: Book by Joe Masteroff. Music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb. Directed by Peter Rothstein for Theater Latté Da and Hennepin Theatre Trust. Where: Pantages Theatre, 710 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls. When: 7:30 p.m. Thu., 8 p.m. Fri., 2 & 8 p.m. Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends Feb. 9. Tickets: $24-$86. 1-800-982-2787, HennepinTheatreTrust.com, or State Theatre box office, 805 Hennepin Av. S., Mpls.

The other part of “Cabaret” is a plotted story, and this is where productions may wobble. Rothstein took no chances when he cast Sally Wingert as Fraulein Schneider, the landlady who falls in love with a Jewish fruit vendor (futzy James Detmar). The relationship of these two takes time to spool out. Here, Wingert and Detmar make the time worthwhile, in musical numbers that express their tender, late-life romance. The book scenes also benefit from the presence of Sean Dooley, who plays wannabe novelist Cliff Bradshaw — Isherwood’s presence in the musical. Cliff is a complex, unsettled personality caught inside the body of a fairly timid American rich boy. Dooley’s Cliff stumbles into the Berlin milieu and falls in love with Sally. He sobers up just in time, for the Emcee’s jocund world has crumbled. Michaels’ crazy little man is left alone, the last one left at the party before Germany turns out the lights.

Graydon Royce has been in love with theater ever since he portrayed Crusher, Mad Dog Vachon and Wally Karbo to frenzied applause in the 6th grade talent show at Hilltop Elementary School. He is a freelance arts critic for the Star Tribune. Show Guide for Cabaret — Popejoy Presents Performance Guides Show Guide for Cabaret Show Guide for Cabaret Learn about cabaret culture and the origins of the Kit Kat Club Show Guide for Cabaret Learn about cabaret culture and the origins of the Kit Kat Club “Wilkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!” sings the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club through painted lips, as the people of 1929 Berlin join him. Any troubles dissolve inside the doors of this cabaret. Cabaret follows Sally Bowles, a middle-class lass from Chelsea, London, is working as a singer at Berlin’s Kit-Kat Club and trying her best to live the thrillingly decadent life the city offers. Into her orbit comes Cliff Bradshaw, a young American writer, and Sally soon moves into his room in the boarding house run by Fräulein Schneider.

Their fellow lodgers include the cheerful whore, Fräulein Kost, and the gentle, graying fruiterer Herr Schultz. As the clouds of political change gather over Germany, Sally, now pregnant by Cliff, is still determined to show the world what a good time she is having and that she will not or cannot hear the noises of Nazism around her. But others can. Life is a Cabaret, Old Chum The culture cabaret was born in the Monmartre district of Paris in 1881 when Le Chat Noir opened. The informal saloon hosted poets, artists and composers; Maupassant, Debussy and Satie frequented Le Chat Noir. People felt comfortable at the cabaret—they didn’t have to take off their hats, and they could talk, eat, and smoke when they wanted to. Once the cabaret’s intimate and informal spirit caught on, other Parisian cabarets opened, including the Moulin Rouge—with its famous windmill—in 1889. By 1900, similar establishments sprang up in several French and German cities.

After World War I, cabarets flourished across Europe, particularly in Germany, where the Weimar government had ended nearly all forms of censorship. The Kit Kat Club of Cabaret is one of these flourishing nightlife hotspots, operating on the eve of Hilter’s rise to power and presenting entertainment and distraction for the Berliners. The Origins of the Kit Kat Club The musical Cabaret went through many changes from its source material to the musical that made Liza Minnelli a household name to the current stage productions. The tale of a young English cabaret singer named Sally Bowles and her admirers comes from Christopher Isherwood’s semi-autobiographical short story collection Goodbye to Berlin (1939). The book was first adapted for the stage in 1951 by John Van Druten as the play I Am a Camera. Another stage incarnation of Ishwerwood’s stories was planned by Sandy Wilson, who had written the book and score for a musical he called Welcome to Berlin. But when Wilson’s producer’s option on the novel and the play expired, Hal Prince picked up the project. Prince commissioned Joe Masteroff to write the book of the play, Fred Ebb to write the lyrics, and John Kander to compose the music.

The quartet realized their initial vision of a play with a prologue of songs describing Berlin from varying viewpoints actually worked better as a traditional book musical, with songs evolving from and driving the plot. The show ultimately became two separate stories in one; the first was a revue centered on the decadence of the seedy Kit Kat Club, the second a story set in the real world in which the club existed. The juxtaposition of scenes with songs used as exposition and separate cabaret numbers as social commentary was a novel concept in the 1960s. The original Broadway production of Cabaret, directed by Harold Prince and choreographed by Ron Field, opened on November 20, 1966. The show ran for 1,165 performances. A West End Production followed in 1968, with Judi Dench as Sally Bowles. In 1972, choreographer Bob Fosse directed the Cabaret film adaptation.

Fosse took out all the musical numbers that didn’t take place on the Kit Kat Club stage, so only two characters sing—Sally Bowles, played by Liza Minnelli, and the Emcee, Joel Grey, reviving his role from the original Broadway production. The film won 8 Academy Awards, including Best Director, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor. The 1987 Broadway revival of Cabaret incorporated songs written specifically for the movie, including “Mein Herr” and “Money, Money.” Woodwind Theatricals will produce the revised 1987 version. In 1993, director Sam Mendes (American Beauty, Jarhead) revived the play in the West End. Mendes' conception differed greatly from the original. Possibly the most significant change was in the character of the Emcee. The role was initially played by Joel Grey as an androgynous, stiff, marionette-like character in a tuxedo with rouged cheeks, but actor Alan Cumming's portrayal in the revival was highly sexualized. Mendes’ critically acclaimed production came to Broadway in 1998, starring Cumming as the Emcee and Natasha Richardson as Sally.

This production featured a number of notable replacements later in the run including: Joely Fisher, Gina Gershon, Deborah Gibson, Teri Hatcher, Jane Leeves, Molly Ringwald, Brooke Shields, and Lea Thompson as Sally; Michael C. Hall, Neil Patrick Harris, Adam Pascal, and John Stamos as the Emcee. The show’s 2,377-performance run makes it the third-longest running revival in Broadway music history. Woodwind Productions Woodwind Productions, established by veteran agent Paul Bartz in 2001, produced Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The show traveled to 70 cities across the United States and Canada in 2002. Woodwind’s touring production of Bye Bye Birdie was part of the Popejoy Presents 2008-2009. Woodwind is producing Cabaret for the 2009-2010 season. Selected Song List Re-Inventing Cabaret Re-Inventing Cabaret and there was a Master of Ceremonies and there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world....

and I was dancing with Sally Bowles and we were both fast asleep." --Clifford Bradshaw's final reminiscence in Kander and Ebb's Cabaret The fun and games are beginning to resemble a Roman circus. Christopher Isherwood's famous party girl, the "divinely decadent" Sally Bowles, has just had a backroom abortion--paid for with her favorite fur coat. Sally's boy friend, Cliff, is so fed up with her that he's finally nixed the relationship. In fact, he's hightailing it out of the country--presumably for good. And oh yes (for those who care about such things) the Weimar Republic is teetering on the brink. It's about to be swallowed up by the Third Reich. But never mind all that. For Sally--as portrayed by Liza Minnelli in Bob Fosse's film adaptation of Cabaret (1972)--it's not even a bad hair day. She looks fabulous. Her lavender evening gown is highlighted with a shimmering waistband of silver-fringe . Her hair is smartly cut and perfectly coifed.

When she sings those legendary words "Life is a cabaret, old chum/Come to the cabaret," her arms open wide and her fingers beckon us to "come hither." By the time she reaches the final chorus, her legs are in high gear, kicking up a Rockette-style storm. Cabaret's famous title song is delivered as an upbeat anthem, a scrappy declaration of the "I-Will-Survive" variety. The effect is so triumphant that we're likely to gloss over the virtually Beckettian sentiment of the song lyric which reads "Start by admitting, from cradle to tomb, it isn't that long a stay." In fairness to Fosse (whose film was, in many ways, a milestone) Kander and Ebb's great song has always been delivered that way, regardless of whether the venue was Harold Prince's original 1966 Broadway production of Cabaret or Liza Minnelli's night club act.

The standard interpretation of this (rather) dark song is an especially good example of what William Dean Howells was complaining about when he lamented, "What the American public always wants is tragedy with a happy ending." It's also no coincidence that in the film version of Cabaret, Fosse turned Sally (British-born in every other incarnation of the story) into a chirpy, fast-talking, irrepressible American. Dementedly zany, yes. Benignly bonkers, perhaps--but hardly a tragic figure. Sally's acquaintance with the darker side of bohemia is pretty much confined to green nail polish, soignée cigarette holders, and casual sex. Now cut to British director Sam Mendes's conception of Sally--as portrayed by Natasha Richardson--in the current New York revival of Cabaret. Mendes's Sally is costumed in a bare black negligee-of-a-dress (a far cry from Minnelli's haute couture.) And this outfit does little to make her stand out from the surrounding darkness. That's only appropriate--because she's about to be enveloped by it.

Her most telling moment--and the sharpest contrast with Liza Minnelli's characterization--comes in the famous verse about Elsie from Chelsea. This is the way it goes: "The day she died the neighbors came to snicker/'Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor'/But when I saw her laid out like a queen/She was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen." When Minnelli belted out those lyrics, the key word was "happiest." Not so for Sam Mendes's revisionist conception of Sally. As Natasha Richardson prepares to sing the line "But when I saw her laid out like . . . " she closes her eyes and begins what looks like a ritual of self-hypnosis. We see this Sally working hard-- very hard!--to convince herself that her story (somehow . . . against all odds . . . ) is going to end happily. Miraculously, her exercise in the power of positive thinking seems to be working, right up until she reaches the word "happiest." But what follows is one of the most ominous pauses in the history of the musical theater.

And the ultimate effect of Richardson's halting delivery is to place the emotional emphasis squarely on the word "corpse." In that split second of silence, Sally's glazed-over eyes open wide and she seems to be staring into Elsie's coffin. But the body she sees there is undoubtedly her own. It's a memento mori--rather than the usual reminder to eat, drink, and be merry. One litmus test of the power of this production of Cabaret is that no one who experiences it will ever again be able to listen to the musical's title song in quite the same innocent way. It's rather like trying to return untarnished to Gene Kelley's rendition of "Singing in the Rain" after you've seen what Stanley Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell do with it (or to it) in their cold-as-ice film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. In fact--unlikely as this may at first sound--it wouldn't surprise me one bit to learn that Mendes's stage version of Cabaret has been influenced as much or more by Kurbrick's darkly nasty movie as by any earlier versions of Cabaret.

1 It's not just that Alan Cumming's Master of Ceremonies wears white suspenders that support a well-endowed cod piece rather like Malcolm McDowells's in Kubrick's film . . . That's the least of the similarities. Like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, this emcee is sexually dangerous--not just naughty, haughty, and epicene in the manner of his great predecessor, Joel Grey. Grey was, in the final analysis, pre-sexual (think Michael Jackson and "Never Never Land"), whereas Cumming is pan-sexual (think the raw Dionysianism of Jim Morrison melded with the androgynous glitter of David Bowie). This Master of Ceremonies is a seduction machine who slinks out of a black leather trench coat and greets the audience in three languages ("Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome . . .") and at least that many sexual orientations. Whatever you want--whatever your fancy or fantasy--this protean, gyrating, omnisexual creature will fulfill it for you. When this man sings, "I am your host," you already sense his ability to massage you into a paradise of instant gratification.

To re-invent a role so closely associated with Joel Grey (who created it on stage and then repeated it in Fosse's film) is a remarkable achievement in its own right. Let's face it: Most of us had long since concluded that Joel Grey didn't just invent this role; he seemed to own the copyright. Was there really any other way to play it? The answer turns out to be a resounding "Yes." Grey's white-faced , roughed-up little man in an elegant tuxedo was a German Expressionist marionette. (Fosse even cuts in the opening sequence of the film to a ventriloquist manipulating a puppet to make sure we don't miss the metaphor). In place of Grey's elegant black-tie attire, Cumming wears the bedraggled remains--the vestiges as it were--of what were once evening clothes. His costume (brilliantly designed by William Ivey Long) is black tie in only the most minimalist sense: A crooked black bow-tie dangles in the middle of his otherwise bare chest. This man has literally and figuratively lost his shirt.

And his characterization--like Mendes's entire production--emphasizes the economic desperation of late Weimar Germany--not the garish color and the honkey-tonk gaiety of Hal Prince's original or Bob Fosse's film. This is especially evident during the "Money Song," which Mendes and his choreographer/co-director Rob Marshall have staged as a sort of desperate, bestial growl. The performers crawl along the floor like wounded, starving alley cats competing for whatever scraps they can find; and the inflated Deutsche Marks they ravenously devour go from hand to crotch, not hand to mouth. In this production, money is a drive as fundamental as sex. (And of course, in Mendes's Cabaret, it's through sex--principally--that one acquires money.) Both Prince and Fosse took their primary visual cues from German expressionist painting and its raw swirls of color.

(In fact, Fosse cuts quickly on several occasions to actual canvases by Kirchner, Grosz, and Beckmann; and it's often hard to tell whether what we're seeing is a painting or a frozen moment from the highly stylized life of Weimar cabaret.) This production drains the color from the canvas--which is another way of saying that Sam Mendes has taken the divinity out of the decadence. His emcee's nipples may be spangled with glitter and outlined in rouge, but there's no disguising the bruises and track marks on his body. Much the same holds true for the cabaret girls who--this time around--don't look like revelers at a New Year's Eve Party costumed by George Grosz. Granted, some of the women sport feather boas, but their thrift shop illusions of elegance are draped incongruously over flimsy lingerie-- thin white bras and baggy panties. Runs go up and down their fish-net stockings. And these aren't the pleasingly plumb Weimar women who jauntily populated the night club's stage in Fosse's film. These girls are gaunt and skeletal.

Their underwear is torn and tawdry; their bodies exposed and vulnerable, They look both bummed out and drugged out. If Prince and Fosse gave us a Cabaret anchored by a chic heroine (Sally Bowles), then Mendes's production is dominated by the look and feel of heroin chic. (There's little question about the way the performers in this cabaret really make ends meet. They do it the old fashioned way, through prostitution. And from the look of their bodies, it would appear that their clients are into some pretty rough trade). No doubt, the ultra-contemporary, grunge-club look of Mendes's production accounts in large part for its great commercial success. (It's as timely as Calvin Klein ad campaigns that exploit anorexic waifs, sado-masochism, and kiddie porn). And it's neither inappropriate nor coincidental that the environmental Kit Kat Klub in which this production plays is currently situated in the old Studio 54.

So yes--for a variety of reasons--the production is doing boffo business at the box office; and it's garnered the sort of reviews that press agents lust after: exercises in monosyllabic gush that exhort the reader to "Go!, or " "Run, don't walk to the box Office . . ." --and--"Whatever you do, don't miss it!" Ironically though, many of the most sophisticated critics in New York--many of the best and the brightest--have done just that: they've missed it. Which is to say: they've missed what Mendes and his team are really up to. (And this production is nothing if not completely and consistently thought out--from the very first moment to the final tableau.) Conceptual, directorial intelligence of this order is rarely lavished on Broadway musicals; and thus it's a great shame that Mendes's work hasn't been more fully understood. Alas, the critics from whom you'd expect the most eloquent accounts of the production are the very people who've liked it least.

Consider for example the usually quite shrewd Ben Brantley in the New York Times: This Cabaret is seedier, raunchier, and more sinister than either the original groundbreaking Broadway version directed by Harold Prince, or the 1970 (sic) movie by Bob Fosse. But it is also, in the long run less effective. Like its heroine, Sally Bowles, it wants nothing more than to shock, and as with Sally, the desire winds up seeming more naive than sophisticated. Not true. Mendes's production wants nothing more than to entertain us, to entertain us to death if necessary. It wants to make us fully complicitous with what goes on in the cabaret--while outside, the world (or at least the world of democracy and cultivated values) is coming to an end. Mark Stein, writing in the New Criterion, expands on Brantley's argument, but he ups the ante in every conceivable way. Stein, a political conservative, goes on and on (in a degree of pornographic detail worthy of Ken Star) about certain gay sexual practices that are depicted in this production.

His goal is to accuse Mendes of historical inauthenticity: These kinky sex acts--he claims--had not yet been invented in Weimar Germany: (Their) simulation in a play laid in l929 and l930 seems to me wholly anachronistic. I make this point because it's highly revealing of Mendes's production: it's about the obsessions of his time, not theirs. This controversy over the date of origin of certain sexual practices is a debate I'm not qualified to enter. And there's more than a bit of gay bashing here, posing as historical fastidiousness. (Steyn is determined to get the record straight--so to speak). But Steyn has, if only inadvertently, stumbled onto the truth. This is a production about our time, but not in the way--or for the reasons--that Steyn suggests. Here we go to the heart of the problem: What (and who) precisely is Mendes's production about? Significantly, every version of Cabaret has been determined that--one way or another--the contemporary audience will see itself reflected in the decadence of Weimar.

In fact, Boris Aronson's legendary design for Hal Prince's l966 Broadway production featured an upstage mirror which served this precise purpose. Fosse repeated the convention in his film; but of necessity, what we (the cinematic audience) saw was the Weimar audience reflected--with sinuous, fun-house distortions--on a silver-mylar surface. Still, the point was made. 2 Critics of Mendes's production think that he's taking the easy way out. He's accused of making it simpler for a contemporary audience to identify with the action by updating it in ways that are unmistakably timely. But Mendes is smart enough to realize that literalist attempts of that sort simply insult the audience by suggesting that's it's incapable of empathizing with--or imaginatively projecting itself into--any reality that doesn't bear a photographic resemblance to the present. The truth, in this instance, is infinitely more complicated than that. What Mendes is really doing, it seems to me, is ferreting out the deeper, darker connections between the Weimar and today. He's showing us that much of what our current popular culture finds erotically appealing has its roots in German fascism.

Yes, it's our look, our fashion statement, but the thematics and the metaphysics of these trends--and the instincts that they manipulate--take us deep into the heart of Nazi aesthetics. That's a bold claim. So I'll need to elaborate. Consider the most famous (certainly the most notorious) work of Nazi art: Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will (l935), an ecstatic celebration of the Sixth Nazi Congress at Nuremberg (otherwise known as the Nuremberg rallies). Susan Sontag, writing about Riefenstahl's work in her landmark essay "Fascinating Fascism," notes that Hitler regarded leadership as sexual master of the 'feminine' masses . . . The expression of the crowds in Triumph of the Will is one of ecstasy; the leader makes the crowd come. Left-wing movements have tended to be unisex, and asexual in their imagery. Right-wing movements, however puritanical and repressive the realities they usher in, have an erotic surface . . .

No doubt, this is part of what Fran Lebowitz was getting at when she quipped that if the problem with Communism is that it's too boring, then the problem with fascism is that it's too exciting. In Riefenstahl's remarkable film, we witness great masses of people increasingly dependent on the Führer for both their ultimate salvation and their essential validation (e.g. without him, they're nothing). 3 This relationship is both erotically charged and highly regressive. Total dominance implies total submission. Hitler offers his followers the promise of instant gratification; and that requires a return to a state of childlike dependency. It's here that we segue into the contemporary images of kiddie porn, heroin chic, and coyly sanitized versions of S& M that the hidden persuaders of the advertising industry find so effective these days. This, I think, explains the basic look and feel of the production that Mendes has conceived and Rob Marshall has choreographed. The theme of erotic, infantile regression is there from the very beginning; and it re-emerges with the regularity of a Wagnerian leit motif. This isn't gratuitous invention on their part.

They've discovered these obsessions right there--in the lyrics and libretto--just waiting to be illuminated. Indeed, in the very opening number , as the emcee introduces the cabaret girls, he tells us that "Helga is the baby, I'm like a father to her. So when she's bad, I spank her. And she's very, very, very, very, very bad!" Where there's daddy, there's also mommy: Witness Sally's first solo titled "Don't Tell Mama." She performs it sitting in a gigantic high chair that turns her into a faux-naif, sex-kitten-of-a baby. In this context, thumb-sucking loses it's innocence. And Sally's next big cabaret number, "Mein Herr," gives us the other side of this erotic coin. Here the performers are no longer coy little girls but tough-as-nails, floor stomping, cigar-chomping dominatrix-types.

(This is the point at which infantile regression and "adult" sado-masochism meet.) Sally savors many of the lyrics in a slow, lascivious, lip-smacking way: The continent of Europe is so wide Mein Herr Not only up and down, but side to side Mein Herr . . . As you've probably guessed (soft-core pornography leaves so little to the imagination), the entire continent of Europe is subsumed into her body. (i.e., "Not only up and down, but side to side, Mein Herr"). There's no reality beyond the body. Sally continues, "I couldn't ever cross it if I tried, Mein Herr, So I do . . . What I can . . . inch by inch . . . step by step . . . mile by mile. Man by man . . ." By the time she utters "inch by inch . . ."--elongating every syllable to the breaking point--we're almost, but not quite, over the top. If Natasha Richardson weren't so irresistibly sexy, the whole thing would turn into a Mae West parody.

In the essay about fascist aesthetics I cited earlier, Susan Sontag addresses the ironies that attend the way in which aspects of Nazi S.S. paraphernalia (boots, leather, chains, iron crosses, etc.) have been erotically co-opted by quarters of contemporary culture: "But why," she asks, has Nazi Germany, which was a sexually repressive society , become erotic. How could a regime which persecuted homosexuals become a gay turn-on? Sontag's essay was first published in l974. Since then, the images and practices she cites have become much more than a gay turn-on. Anyone with even the slightest acquaintance with MTV knows the extent to which the themes of S&M have infiltrated utterly mainstream music video: Consider two musical nonentities currently enjoying a revival of sorts. On the one hand: the wholesome Midwestern rock and roll of John Coughar. On the other, the androgynous neodisco of Dead or Alive. Cougar's "Hurts So Good" may have been recorded in Indiana, but the party animals in this video are heavily into black leather, garter belts, fish net stockings, chains, and massive motorcycles.

Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round" is also illustrated with a bondage theme. (In fact, "You Spin Me Round" should probably have been subtitled "You Tie Me Up.") And so it goes--round and round--in ways that are profoundly unflattering to us. The famous, final sentences of Sontag's essay have become more timely than she ever could have imagined: Now there is a master scenario available to everyone. The color is black, the material is leather , the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstasy, the fantasy is death. In Mendes's production, we encounter "the master scenario" long before we see or hear any direct references to the Master Race. The first overt instance of Nazi ideology in the production is that ominously sweet hymn to the Aryan fatherland, "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" (e.g., "The Sun on the Meadow is summery warm/The stag in the forest runs free/But gather together to greet the storm/Tomorrow belongs to me"). In Prince's production, this rousing anthem was sung by the waiters in the Kit Kat Klub.

In Fosse's movie, the singers were Sunday afternoon picnickers in a folksy Bavarian park. Mendes changes the context quite radically. In his production, we listen to a scratchy old record being played on a period Victrola illuminated by a tightly focused follow spot. The a cappella singer is a sweet-voiced boy soprano; and his only audience is the emcee. As the record spins on the turntable, the circle of light around it slowly irises out to envelope the whole stage. It is , of course, a metaphor for advancement. But what exactly is being advanced? At that moment in the production, the answer seems all too obvious (i.e., "It" must be the ideology and mass appeal of the Third Reich, right?) But as things turn out, Mendes has something else--something more subtle and sophisticated--in mind. We won't learn what that is until the final, stunning moment of the production. But there are clues aplenty along the way. For example, until the last verse of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," the emcee merely listens, but when the song reaches its final "to me," he whispers those two words in tandem with the young boy.

Yes, the world belongs to him; he's not so much a young Nazi as an overgrown infant, a narcissistic creature who knows no division between himself and the rest of the world. Indeed, his "to me" has more in common with Madame Rose's famous "for me, for me, for me" in Gypsy than it does with the ideology of Aryan purity. This leads us to the central metaphor in Mendes's production. Here, in effect, the Kit Kat Klub has swallowed up the world beyond it. Every scene--even those that in Prince's production took place in the outside world--are now framed by the cabaret. The emcee is always there, presiding over and manipulating the action like a puppeteer. At first , we're inclined to read this directorial decision as a brilliant solution to the structural schizophrenia that plagued the original production of Cabaret (i.e., one half of the musical--the half set in the night club itself--was a stunning new "concept musical" of the sort that Jerome Robbins had pioneered. But the other half--all of the scenes set outside the club--were an old fashioned book musical.

) Parenthetically, it's worth mentioning that Harold Prince had produced Jerome Robbins's landmark stagings of West Side Story and Fiddler on the Roof. Then, after Robbins left the theater and returned full time to the world of the ballet, Prince turned director and became Robbins's best and most important pupil. But in Cabaret, the Robbins influence didn't extend beyond the scenes set in the Kit Kat Club. Bob Fosse was well aware of this problem; and in the film adaptation, he simply eliminated all of the songs (except "Tomorrow Belongs To Me") that are performed outside the Kit Kat Club. Fosse was determined to produce an adult musical, a realistic musical. (And of course, people don't usually sing to one another in the course of daily life.) But what an impoverishing solution this was! And how self-sacrificing (given the fact that Fosse was a Broadway baby, a song and dance man). Still, he deserves considerable credit for the effort. Fosse also commisioned Jay Allen to write a brand-new screenplay that--in purely dramatic terms--develops the central characters more fully than either I Am a Camera or Joe Masteroff's libretto for Cabaret.

But it's especially interesting to compare Fosse's solution to the central problem with Sam Mendes's approach. In the final analysis, Fosse's film takes place in the real world of l930 Berlin--the Kit Kat Klub constituting one small part of that larger world. Mendes's production takes place entirely within a cabaret whose spirit has all but swallowed up the real world. In a purely pragmatic sense, Mendes has gone a long way toward solving the problem of Cabaret's split personality. But more importantly, his integration of the two halves of Cabaret also provides his production with its central metaphor: Life really is (or has become) a cabaret. Everything takes place--literally and figuratively--within the frame of the night club. The result is a powerful image of people amusing themselves to death. Mendes's production is about life in an entertainment state, where anything and everything--including the symbols and accouterments of the Third Reich--can be reduced to a form of entertainment, fashion-statement, or sexual turn-on. During the first-act finale, the emcee drops his trousers, coyly moons the audience, and displays a swastika prominently tattooed on his ass.

The emcee is the spirit of the zeitgeist all right, but what he symbolizes isn't so much Weimar decadence as the spectacle of a society (ours!) in which politics, journalism, and televised news (alas, every presumably serious pursuit) have all become subdivisions of show business. Again, this won't became crystal clear until Mendes's final coup de theater (which he's invented from whole cloth). And although I'm reluctant to spoil the surprise for those who haven't seen the production, there's no way to fully appreciate what Mendes is really up to without discussing it. This is also, by the way, the moment that's been most consistently misunderstood by the New York critics. Donald Lyons in the Wall Street Journal talks about "a final tableau, striking but unearned. . . ." Michael Feingold's misreading in the Village Voice is even less charitable, but more typical. His (Mendes's) final stunt implies a certain confusion: The back wall flies, up, revealing the brick and barbed wire of a concentration camp. At the same time the MC peels off his coat, under which he wears an inmate's striped uniform, sporting both a yellow star and a pink triangle.

Far from being shocked, one's first impulse is to hope he isn't going to render a scene from Bent. The stunty use of the imagery in effect discredits the "serious" half of the show: If we're toying with the Holocaust, who the fuck cares about Sally and Cliff?" Ah, but we are shocked; for the image sends a retroactive chill back through the entire production; and we suddenly realize just what it is that the emcee truly represents. Despite his Hitlerian vocal cadences, his goose-stepping demeanor and the coy gestures in which he slides a forefinger over his lips to signify a tiny mustache, this emcee is not ultimately the symbolic presence of the Führer. Rather he's someone who thinks that he can appropriate the icons of Nazism into high fashion and/or sources of sexual stimulation. (And the dark joke of course--if we dare to call it that--is on him. One thinks of those gay aesthetes--Philip Johnson among them--who flirted with fascism in part because they found it erotically charged.

Johnson once wrote about his yearnings for "all those blonde boys in black leather." Here it behooves us to return to Susan Sontag's question: "How could a regime which persecuted homosexuals become a gay turn-on? " Mendes's production --unlike any of its predecessors--actually addresses this issue; and in so doing, it manages to avoid the logical fallacy that compromised every earlier version of Cabaret. This is the theory that reads "Weimar decadence led directly to fascism." At the end of Fosse's film for example, reflected in the upstage mylar mirror, we see that the Kit Kat Klub's audience now consists in large part of Swastika-brandishing Nazis. This is just plain unhistorical. Just plain wrong. The infamous "Degenerate Art Exhibition" of l937--in which the Nazis confiscated and mockingly displayed the paintings of Nolde, Kirchner, Beckmann, etc.--holding them up as casebook examples of moral degeneracy--demonstrated what the Third Reich really thought about the sort of Weimar bohemia that flourished in places like the Kit Kat Klub.

Cabaret's Kit Kat Klub--like its feline inspiration--has had many lives (almost nine, if you count all the versions that stretch from Isherwood to Kander and Ebb). But Mendes's is the first to do justice to the complex historical relationship between German expressionist Weimar decadence and the rise of the Third Reich. And along the way, he does something even more important: He illuminates the forces that threaten us in l998 as clearly as he illustrates the forces that toppled Weimar democracy in the l930s. In fact, Mendes's production can be interpreted as a theatrical gloss on Neil Postman's great study of contemporary totalitarianism, Amusing Ourselves to Death. Published in l985, Postman writes, early on in the book, We were keeping our eye on l984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't , thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held . . . . But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another--slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World . . . .

In the Huxleyan prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice. We watch him, by ours. There is no need for wardens or gates or Ministries of Truth. When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation is at risk . . . . For Neil Postman--as for Sam Mendes--the gravest threat to contemporary life is not neo-Nazism, but rather the pervasive belief that Life, all of it--public as well as private--is nothing but a cabaret, old chum . . . Notes 1. The musical has quite a history. Its sources and predecessors include Christopher Isherwood's short story "Goodbye to Berlin" (l939), John van Druten's nonmusical drama about Sally Bowles, I Am a Camera ( l951), and a film version of the van Druten play (starring Julie Harris) in '55.

Then in l966, the composer John Kander, the lyricist Fred Ebb, the libretto writer Joe Masteroff, and the director Harold Prince came up with the brilliant concept of the emcee as their production's center of gravity; and Cabaret as we know it (or as we thought we knew it) was born. The emcee remains central to Fosse's film adaptation in '72. But in Mendes's production, the material is born again, virtually re-invented--this time by way of Stanley Kubrick. Return to place in the text. 2. A vestige of that upstage mirror remains in the decor for Mendes's production: It's an empty frame surrounded by chase lights (rather like a gigantic make-up mirror minus the glass). And it's through this frame that the emcee often watches the action that seems to take place outside the Kit Kat Klub: in the boarding house, the train, Herr Schultz's fruit store, etc. But the metaphor of the frame is fundamentally different from the metaphor of the mirror. This production is about voyeuristic peepholes, not about seeing oneself reflected in an upstage looking glass. Return to place in the text.

3.There is of course something more than a little Hitler-like about this man's mannerisms--especially his vocal cadences: the way he suddenly, unexpectedly pounces on certain syllables. One moment his voice may well be soothing the audience with a mellifluous caress; but the very next moment, he's whipping the words (and those who listen to his words) into shape. This is not to say that the emcee is necessarily a "little Hitler," but that the seed of Hitlerian fascism is there in all masterful performers, including this one. (They don't call him a master of ceremonies for nothing.) Return to place in the text. Cabaret at Studio 54 New York, NY - tickets, information, reviews On Tour LIFE IS A.... The Roundabout Theatre Company's latest revival of Cabaret is a star-studded, Tony nominated affair, with Sienna Miller and Alan Cumming in the lead roles! Scottish-born stage veteran Alan Cumming reprises his Tony-winning role as The Emcee - the gritty, sensual and slightly freaky narrator this iconic production is infamous for!

This revival has been nominated for two 2014 Tony Awards for featured cast members, and is directed once again by Academy Award winning director Sam Mendes. Sienna Miller takes over from Emma Stone on February 17 as the iconic temptress Sally Bowles, who strikes the line between sensuality and tragic circumstance. WHAT IS CABARET ABOUT? The musical, which first appeared on Broadway in 1966, is set in 1930s Berlin in the infamous Kit Kat Klub where cabaret performer Sally Bowles sings against the voice of Nazi rise to power and falls in love with a young American writer who rooms with her. But can the performers hold onto their decadent and bohemian lifestyle with the threat of Nazism ever on the rise? The 1998 production received much acclaim for its reinterpretation of the show's sexual undertones, particularly for the role of The Emcee (which won Alan Cumming a Tony Award) - we're positive that the 2014 revival is sure to continue this splendid trend!

Additional Information Cabaret on Broadway - Roundabout Theatre Company Roundabout Theatre Company SHOP Cabaret Golden Globe® nominee Sienna Miller (American Sniper, After Miss Julie) is Sally Bowles alongside Tony® winner Alan Cumming (“The Good Wife,” Roundabout’s The Threepenny Opera) as the Emcee in Sam Mendes (Skyfall, American Beauty) and Rob Marshall's (Nine and Chicago, the films) Tony-winning production of Cabaret, also starring Tony nominees Danny Burstein (Follies) and Linda Emond (Death of a Salesman). Welcome to the infamous Kit Kat Klub, where the Emcee, Sally Bowles and a raucous ensemble take the stage nightly to tantalize the crowd––and to leave their troubles outside. But as life in pre-WWII Germany grows more and more uncertain, will the decadent allure of Berlin nightlife be enough to get them through their dangerous times? Come hear some of the most memorable songs in theatre history, including “Cabaret,” “Willkommen” and “Maybe This Time.” Right this way, your table’s waiting at Cabaret, John Kander, Fred Ebb and Joe Masteroff's Tony-winning musical that the New York Post calls “one for the ages.”

Question: Which musical takes place in the Kit Kat Club?
Answer: Cabaret