Were the Bob Fosse and Sam Mendes Versions of ‘Cabaret’ Insufficiently Over-the-Top?

The glorious score notwithstanding, ‘Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,’ as director Rebecca Frecknall’s immersive production has been named, is most compelling when the characters stop singing and dancing.

Marc Brenner
Eddie Redmayne as the Emcee in 'Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club.' Marc Brenner

“Cabaret” could never be mistaken for a sunny musical, or a wholesome one. Since having its premiere on Broadway in 1966 — and particularly since Bob Fosse’s masterful screen adaptation arrived, six years later — Kander and Ebb’s darkly glittering portrait of Weimar-era Berlin, based on the play “I Am A Camera” and stories by Christopher Isherwood, has been inspiring saucy and dystopian visions on both sides of the Atlantic.

The acclaimed English director Sam Mendes saw fit to revisit it twice, with Rob Marshall co-directing and choreographing his take for Broadway; both productions featured a marvelously sly, spry Alan Cumming as the master of ceremonies who oversees giddy debauchery at the Kit Kat Club. Mr. Mendes cast a series of famous actresses — the late Natasha Richardson, Michelle Williams, Emma Stone — as the London-bred showgirl Sally Bowles, whose aspiration and desperation form a prism through which we view Germany’s descent into madness.

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