John Jarboe & the Kit Kat Club dancers in the Arden Theatre Co.’s “Cabaret”
The Arden Theatre Co. opens its 30th season with John Kander-Fred Ebb’s perennially popular musical Cabaret. The production is ostensibly based on the famed1998 Roundabout Theatre production co- directed by Sam Mendes and choreographer Rob Marshall, but director Matt Decker is able to sharpen its political bite and louche dazzle.
“Leave you troubles outside” Emcee John Jarboe belts out in the opening number “Willkommen” but, this production doesn’t let us, Decker reminding us we are just a surgical light cue away from seeing the brutal parallel history that brought the rise of Hitler’s Nazi party and scabrous implications to our own state of political affairs. Cabaret’s themes of racism, nationalism and the politic of the ‘other’ is as relevant as ever.
This musical is very suited to the scale of theater’s amphitheater configuration. Superb lighting and sound design by Maria Shaplin and Jorge Cousineau in tandem with David Gordon’s dramatic set with a thrust runway stage with café tables around the skirt and rear proscenium frame under a musician’s alcove. Conductor/pianist Alex Bechtel leads the nine piece band spikes Kander’s raucous score with orchestral thrust and clarity.
Any production of Cabaret has to overcome the long shadow of three distinctly different and very successful versions starting with Harold Prince’s original 60s hit, starring Joel Grey as the wryly campy Emcee. The 70s Fosse version which was a hit vehicle for director-choreographer Bob Fosse and a star turn for Liza Minnelli as chanteuse Sally Bowles. The famed Roundabout version starring Alan Cumming has had two returns to Broadway, the most recent spawning another national tour, which played Philly last spring. has had several returns to Broadway and starring Alan Cumming as the Emcee, spawned several returns to Broadway and a national tour which had a week in Philly last spring.
Genuine cabaret is all about the performers interacting with the audience and Jarboe is the lusty, sexually fluid Emcee and gives an indelible tour de force performance, whether he has a tear in his eye pleading with the audience to ‘Live and let live’ or as the provocateur cum hustler.
Jarboe descending the runway in a smoky spotlight in a top hat, bare-chested with rouged nipples and guarders is a stunning diva drag moment in this or any other season. All of Olivera Gajic’s costume designs spell fabulous on the cabaret runway- From Sally’s wraparound flapper dresses with beaded fringe and drop-waist velvet Euro-couture and to the fetishist drag on the Kit Kat Club gypsies, not to mention Jarboe’s mercury robe right out Garbo’s gowns by Adrian wardrobe.
Meanwhile, vocally he is electrifying equally entrancing, from his deliriously sweaty vocal sex on “Two Ladies” to his full baritone on “I Don’t Care Much” serenely floating down the theater aisles to the stage in a drop-dead blood red sequin gown.
But there is still no way around Joe Masteroff’s bumpy book, which was a adaptation from John Van Druten’s play, that also completely misappropriates Christopher Isherwood’s original autobiographical stories. Isherwood, the preeminent gay writer of his generation, made it perfectly clear on several occasions that he went to Berlin in the 30s to escape repressive England and live the gay life in Weimar Berlin to have sex with men.
Isherwood is fictionalized in Cabaret as an expat writer from Harrisburg, who tries to suppress any hints of his past gay life and his sudden determination to marry Sally Bowles, the libertine cabaret chanteuse. This mutilation always a questionable plot devise even in its time and now comes off as completely inauthentic.
Daniel Fredrick and Charissa Hogeland as Cliff and Sally give earnest, if erratic performances. As written and played the intimate scenes with Clifford and Sally ignite little chemistry because they are brittle to begin with. Hogeland conveys Sally’s glamor and fragility and she is most intriguing in her whispery rendition of “Maybe This Time” that slowly builds, and wisely, doesn’t turn into a belter ala Liza.
They are leading the fine supporting cast. Mary Elizabeth Scallen and Kenny Morris as Fraulein Schneider, who runs the boarding house where Cliff lives and her romance with Herr Schultz, a Jewish widower, bring genuine pathos to their scenes, not an easy task in contrast to the dazzle of the Kit Kat Club. Scallen so vocally powerful on “What Would You Do” as she decides to break her engagement with Herr Schultz after his grocery store is vandalized by Nazis. Christopher Patrick Mullen is chillingly affable as the stealth Nazi operative and Suli Holum is hilarious as the honest working girl Fraulein Kost who knows how to entertain a sailor (or three) and still stay in good with her Fraulein Schneider.
Choreography by Jenn Rose is a distilled mix of Fosse and Marshall quotes on “Mein Heir” and especially for the barnburner “Don’t Tell Mama” (Hogeland’s best number). But the variation, precision and polish belongs to Rose and these dancers, from their witty kick-line exuberance to their hedonistic Entr’acte Charleston and fleshy erotic showdance, they are burning this runway floor.
Performances of Cabaret at the Arden continue through Oct. 22, for tickets & performance times go to www.ardentheatre.orgvo