If you leave Massey Theatre after watching Royal City Musical Theatre’s Cabaret and you can stop yourself from humming a little Willkommen or Cabaret on your way home, you might want to check your pulse.
The John Kander and Fred Ebb musical, centred around a seedy Berlin cabaret in the early 1930s, features one irresistible tune after another.
One of the biggest strengths of Royal City Musical Theatre’s production is that it doesn’t get in the way of that.
For one thing, it doesn’t take itself too seriously – a temptation in a musical that tackles some dark themes.
Director-choreographer Valerie Easton deftly balances the show’s sinister undertones, foreboding the Nazis’ rise to power in Germany, with the bawdy, decadent good times being had by all at the Kit Kat Klub, with its kicklines, thruples, loose ladies in fishnets and pretty boys in shorts and crop tops.
The fun is tinged with a sense of impending calamity, but it’s still bloody fun.
The story revolves around a young American writer, Cliff Bradshaw, played with convincing gee-shucks naiveté by Tim Howe, and his relationship with English cabaret performer Sally Bowles, played by Lauren Bowler.
Bowler’s Bowles is more confident and cheeky than, say, Liza Minelli’s in the 1972 film adaption of the show, keeping her essential neediness, insecurity and despair much farther below the surface.
It’s a timely reorientation, given the rise of women’s voices in the performing arts over the last few years.
(More could have been done, perhaps, to re-envision the misogynistic humour in the show’s opening number, Willkommen, without sacrificing its intended raciness – but I’m not exactly sure how.)
Bowler, with strong vocal performances and daring dances, carries the show, along with Andrew Cownden, who plays the Emcee – everyone’s favourite corrupting influence.
Cownden, with cherubic cheeks and painted-on cupid’s-bow lips, is well cast as the embodiment of the cabaret – fun, irreverent and covering beneath this veneer something darker.
In a role that requires agility, a lot of singing and a definite X factor, Cownden shows he’s up to the task.
Olesia Shewchuk, as Fraulein Kost, amuses as she entertains a parade of sailors in her rented room, while Gavin LeClaire, as Ernst Ludwig, gives us a straightforward glimpse of the kind of man who’ll thrive after Hitler makes Germany great again.
In a subplot of their own, Cheryl Mullen, as the German landlady Fraulein Schneider, and Damon Calderwood, as the Jewish fruit seller Herr Schultz, show just the opposite and set up the show’s most haunting scene.(Calderwood’s lovely tenor helps make Herr Schultz an even more sympathetic character than he would otherwise already be.)
It’s impossible not to recognize the timeliness of show, of course, given the political climate south of the border and elsewhere around the world and the danger of giving in to our very human impulse to ignore it in favour of having a good time.
Even with such dark undertones, however, it’s hard not to come away from the show and instantly want to belt out its catchiest tunes.
In this production, the orchestra’s bang-on, exuberant performance makes it nearly impossible not to.
The ensemble, meanwhile, sends it with one energetic song and dance number after another.
(Mein Herr, featuring Sally Bowles and the Kit Kat Girls in heels, on chairs, is a personal favourite – so much potential for disaster, such a commendable display of courage and ab strength from the dancers.)
All in all, Royal City Musical Theatre’s production of Cabaret is a must-see, not just for musical theatre lovers, but anyone – as long as they have a pulse.
Cabaret is onstage at the Massey Theatre (735 Eighth Ave.) April 18 to 21 at 7:30 p.m. with matinees at 2 p.m. on April 21 and 22. The show continues April 26 to 28 at 7:30 p.m. with matinees at 2 p.m. on April 28 and 29.
Look for tickets at www.ticketsnw.ca.
