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.

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