Cabaret - Review

Playhouse Theatre, London

*****

Music by John Kander

Lyrics by Fred Ebb

Book by Joe Masteroff

Directed by Rebecca Frecknall

Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley

In a remarkable transfiguration, London's Playhouse Theatre is ingeniously transformed by designer Tom Scutt to an in-the-round setting which after an equally imaginative pre-show mise en scene, goes a long way to transporting the audience to Berlin’s Kit Kat Club, the home of the show’s eponymous cabaret.

Rebecca Frecknall’s interpretation offers a bold take on the Kander & Ebb classic. The cabaret girls (“each and every one, a virgin”) are a chic metrosexual bunch, cleverly mixing 2021’s androgyny with Berlin’s famed inter-war decadence. The Kit Kat Club of course is a dive and rising from its deepest depths is the exquisitely ghastly Emcee, played in this iteration by Eddie Redmayne.

Cabaret’s Emcee is one of the most ingenious creations of late 20th century musical theatre. Almost like a Greek Chorus, or Lear’s Fool, he holds up a mirror to the Club’s audience (literally, in this staging, the theatre audience), parodying the hopes of the outside world (“Life is disappointing? Forget it”) while equally mocking the rise of Nazism and the persecution of the Jews. As Redmayne delivers If You Could See Her, the brutality of his satire chills to the bone. The actor is a tour de force throughout the piece such that when he is at times mute in the Finale, it only adds to the horrors that Germany as a nation will soon descend into.

Opposite the Kit Kat Club’s Emcee is of course the English cabaret artiste Sally Bowles. Jessie Buckley is sensational in her take on Bowles, bringing an understated haunting to the role. In her opening number Don’t Tell Mama, Buckley stuns with a polished insouciance that has the Kit Kat Club cheering for more. By the time the show is done however, and her Sally has both witnessed and experienced tragedy, Buckley’s take on the title number is breathtaking. Not for her the Broadway bravado of the song that one may perhaps associate with Liza Minnelli - rather, a delivery of Kander & Ebb’s signature tune that shows the singer to be broken and vulnerable. It is a stunning realisation of the song that shocks both in its despair and in quite how powerfully Buckley inverts the number’s traditional style into something far more poignant and haunting. I doubt that there will be a stronger performance to be found on London’s musical theatre scene for quite some time.

Redmayne and Buckley are surrounded by talent. Omari Douglas’ Clifford Bradshaw, a naïf to Berlin and the foil to the story’s piercing arc is assured and credible in his role. When late in the second act he is beaten up by Nazi thugs, there is a multi-faceted angle to the hate that he is subject to. Liza Sadovy as Fraulein Schneider, Berlin’s world-weary landlady, is gifted a number of musical opportunities, in which she shines, and her story too offers a sad wry glimpse into the country’s looming thunderstorm of fascism.

Fraulein Schneider’s two other tenants are the Jewish grocer Herr Schultz (Elliot Levey) and prostitute Fraulein Kost (Anna-Jane Casey).  Kander, Ebb and Joe Masteroff had a challenge in writing Schultz - as they sought to capture his pride in his German citizenship alongside his love for Schneider, while at all times keeping him wilfully blind to how the fate of German Jewry was to play out. It would have been easy to make Schultz a more soft and sentimental sop, but he is written (and here, played) perceptively, such that his future murder, that as a Jew he will likely face, plays out only in our minds, rather than on stage.

Casey is magnificent as Fraulein Kost, a small character who so skilfully depicts both Berlin’s depravity and its desperation. The gusto with which Kost joins in with Tomorrow is one of the most outstandingly simple depictions of the appeal of Hitler’s National Socialism to much of the German population.

Stewart Clarke’s Ernst Ludwig is the musical's face of Nazism, with Clarke cleverly capturing the ugliness of his role, at all times avoiding cliche and melodrama. As he leads the end of the first act with Tomorrow, it is a chastened and shocked audience that head out for their interval beers and ice-creams.

Jennifer Whyte’s musical direction of her 9-piece orchestra that boldly spans the auditorium is adroit, with Kander’s melodies being richly served. All her musicians are magnificent, but the guitar/banjo work from Sarah Freestone together with Matt French’s percussion are particularly distinctive and memorable.

With antisemitism again manifest on the streets of London, Cabaret has never been more relevant.

Booking until 1st October 2022

Photo credit: Marc Brenner

Amadeus

Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester

*****

Written by Peter Shaffer
Directed by Jonathan Church

Rupert Everett as Antonio Salieri

Chichester’s newly restored Festival Theatre is sumptuously graced with chandeliers and a baroque arch. It's a lavish touch from designer Simon Higlett that sets the scene for an exhilarating production of Amadeus, Peter Shaffer's intriguing commentary upon Vienna’s Kappellmeister Antonio Salieri whose jealousy of the genius of his young contemporary Mozart tormented the Italian composer throughout his life.

This production is one of those rare trinities of excellence in writing, performance and stagecraft. Rupert Everett, barely offstage throughout, plays the tormented Salieri who we first encounter  infirm and at the end of his days, dementedly raving that his devious machinations some 35 years earlier had led to Mozart's untimely death, impoverished and racked with disease. Everett seamlessly slips between the years of his now senility and the conspiratorial times of his younger self. His is a maestro of mediocrity in a performance that carries the DNA of a latter day Francis Urquhart, cross bred with Shakespeare's Claudius and Iago. One feels no sympathy for Everett’s philanderous Latin, yet we are awed at the persona that he creates.

He has his match in Joshua McGuire's Mozart. Shaffer's research is meticulous, portraying the gifted Austrian as a scatologically obsessed immature with behavioural difficulties. McGuire captures the manic frustration of Mozart's genius, being so bafflingly snubbed at every turn, though as the narrative unfolds we see his resolve harden as he suspects Salieri as the phantom of his operas. McGuire skilfully references the complexities of Mozart’s relationship with his father and in some fabulous scenes defines his desperate, even if deceitful, love for his ever tolerant wife Constanze (another standout performance from Jessie Buckley). Alongside, Jonathan Church assembles a stellar supporting cast that includes Simon Jones who subtly suggests the well-meaning yet inept buffoonery of Austria’s Emperor Joseph II, with John Standing as his shrewd yet meddling censorious courtier Count Rosenberg.   

The re-constructed auditorium is a tribute to all that is excellent in modern theatre. The sightlines and acoustics are perfect, whilst the semi-circular thrust, stepped for this production, allows for an exciting 360° use of the space. Church draws upon a world-class team of creatives for the show. Fotini Dimou's costumes are a confection in themselves that would truly win Salieri's discerning approval, whilst Danuta Barszczewska's wig work is faultless. Amadeus is nothing without its musical backdrop and Matthew Scott’s musical direction (and wonderful fortepiano playing) together with Stephen Mear’s subtly staged choreography complete the journey back to the Age of Enlightenment.

Amadeus is, yet again, a Chichester show worthy of a London transfer or a wider tour. Church and his company provide an unmissable interpretation of one of the 20th century’s greatest English plays.

Runs until 2nd August 2014

Henry V

Noel Coward Theatre

***

Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Michael Grandage

Jude Law

Jude Law is an inspirational Henry V. Michael Grandage knows the actor’s potential well and in this closing production of the director’s innovative West End season, Law represents a glimpse of what can be the finest of British stagecraft. 

Shakespeare’s Chorus (a youthfully rucksacked Ashley Zhangazha) famously asks in his prologue “can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?” and in truth, the answer is “No”. Christopher Oram’s design seeks to replicate a timbered arena, but whilst his endeavours are noble, to modern audiences accustomed to savouring their Shakespeare on the vast and visually accessible expanses of the subsidised Olivier and Royal Shakespeare stages, the confines of the Noel Coward and its antiquated Edwardian sightlines, present a hurdle from the outset. Law is unquestionably fabulous and his performance hints at greatness, but this Henry V is a Rolls Royce engine performing inside a far less glamorous arena. 

The play of course is a clever study in leadership, both political and on the battlefield. Henry is a brilliant reader of men and when in Act Two Cambridge, Masham and Northumberland's treachery is found out and they are challenged by the king, it is thrilling theatre. Law's monarch displays righteous menace through a combination of cool understatement and steely determination and we sense the traitors' terror. Law's St Crispin Day speech too is another humbling and inspiring treatment of some of the Bard’s most beautiful verse. When he speaks to his band of brothers, the sincerity is unquestionable. Ever the consummate actor, Law saves the best until last. The courtship scene with Jessie Buckley's Katherine is simply a masterclass in Shakespearean cool. An actor who not so long ago was the country’s alpha-male (and to many, still is), Law woos the M'lle with wit, charm and passion. It is rare for a Shakespearean role to lend itself to a swooning audience, but one senses that there will be swoons aplenty throughout this run.

The company work could be tighter. Seen some days after the first press night and whilst Norman Bowman and Ron Cook as Nym and Pistol respectively provide a wonderfully authentic grit to their more humble but critical characters, veteran kiwi James Laurenson should know better than to race through Exeter's text. Grandage would do well to keep a regular eye on maintaining the original tightness of his work. 

Law’s name alone will ensure that the production sells well and he justifies the face value ticket price (though no more). Amidst a production that occasionally falters, he shines and gives a very modern Henry to a classic history.

Runs until 15th February 2014