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Cabaret emcee3/8/2023 And with no set to change and the stage bare but for the most essential of props, Frecknall welds it all together and never lets the tension flag. For once the overworked term “immersive” is entire justified and the mood feeds the interpretation.įrecknall’s approach is simple: every moment and possibility in Joe Masteroff’s book and John Kander and Fred Ebb’s score has been thought through. It feels like you’re entering a Walter Sickert painting peopled by characters dressed – and undressed – by painters like Otto Dix and George Grosz. It’s now a dimly lit Art Nouveau palace of faded grandeur, with the audience on two sides wrapped around and focusing in on a tiny, bare circular stage from which the dancers can tease and toy with audience members. Out goes the proscenium arch and the entire fabric and texture. For that, audiences don’t just sit in their seats they get to experience extensive pre- and post-show drinking, dance and erotic display in newly built bars and passageways and on stage in a formerly 832-seat West End house now wholly and radically reconfigured into the 590-seat Kit Kat Club.ĭesigner Tom Scutt hasn’t just re-routed the building he’s re-conceived the auditorium. Prior to opening, the production’s talking point (in addition to the hot casting) was the ticket price, a London record at £250 ($332) – or, with dinner and champagne thrown in, £325 ($430). I left the show for good in June 1999. Cabaret finally closed on Broadway in January 2004.Ever since Bob Fosse cast a never-better Liza Minnelli in his Oscar-winning re-imagining of the musical “ Cabaret,” revivals of the original musical have leaned toward being “All About Sally.” Then Sam Mendes came along with his Broadway version with lascivious Alan Cumming, turning it into “All About The Emcee.” The triumph – that’s not too strong a word – of director Rebecca Frecknall’s stunner of a production is that, despite piercing performances from Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne, her supremely intelligent, emotionally draining vision of the show turns it, enthrallingly, into “All About Berlin.” I then returned to the show in December at its new home, Studio 54. The production opened at the Kit Kat Klub (formerly the Henry Miller Theatre) in March 1998 and I performed until September, when I left to shoot the movie Titus in Rome. Afterwards there were hundreds of people outside the stage door waiting to say cheerio to me. I thought, I'm going to be standing here with the band vamping for hours. I remember trying to start the show and walking out on stage and people wouldn't stop clapping. All the friends I'd made in New York were there to share it with me. I was so stressed out because of the weight of responsibility I felt for what was about to happen, and so I went next door and had a really good cry with Ron Rifkin.Īnd also on the last day of my run, the following June, it was a lovely thing. The stairs backstage too were all lined with everybody's gifts. I didn't think I was going to be able to get ready because there was no room. I remember being so stressed out because I got sent so many presents and things and my dressing room was so tiny. The first night I was so tense because people kept telling me that everything was going to change, and it did. Well, what can I say about this? I had no idea what success on Broadway was like. The production was a huge success, and I won the Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Theatre World, FANY, New York Press and New York Public Advocate's Awards for my performance. I reprised his role of The Emcee in the Broadway production, with Natasha Richardson playing opposite me as Sally Bowles, and Sam Mendes was joined by Rob Marshall as co-director and choreographer.
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