Personally I prefer the 1998 revival! While Joel Grey does a great emcee I think Alan cumming really shows all the emotions of the emcee! From sad to happy to depressing just brilliant! And the stage of the 98' production was great! What's you're favorite?
Cabaret used to be mentioned as the one show where the movie was actually better than the original stage version. I think the 1998 version brought in a lot of good stuff from the film and is superior to the 1966 (but I still like the movie better than any stage version I've seen)
I remember in the mid 80's really enjoying the pre-Broadway tour in SF of the revival with Joel Grey specifically because it was Joel Grey. I dug the 90's revival too, much more when I saw it with Susan Egan than on tour with Teri Hatcher (no surprise there).
I know it's cliche to say, but I consider the movie such a different animal that I just think of the two works as different adaptations of some of the same and some different parts of Isherwood's Berlin Stories--that share a good deal of the same music... I love both.
(On the other hand, as a movie anyway, I think I Am a Camera is very much the poorest adaptation of The Berlin Stories--I'm glad Masteroff's book for Cabaret is not that faithful to it, especially in its oddly comic tone, though it's fun to see Julie Harris as Sally, a performance that when he met her off-stage, Isherwood apparently said she *was* Sally Bowles, despite disliking the actual play--it does seem an odd fit for the playwright of I Remember Mamma.)
I saw the Mendes/Marshall production on tour in Vancouver around 2000, with Kate Shindle as Sally (I remember worrying because all the pre-performance press was about her being a Miss America, and I knew nothing else about her, but she was great.) I thought it was pretty much brilliant.
That said, I really think Prince's original production gets short shift from some fans of the revival--as well as critics. It's ironic that I've read people who basically say "Finally, a gritty Cabaret, as it should be!" seeming to forget how gritty--for a major Broadway musical, the original seemed in 1966--with many critics back then feeling they had to apologize and warn about its "distateful" subject matter.
It's easy to justify that by saying that was nearly 50 years back, and tastes have changed, and that's true of course. I've only seen a very good video of the 1987 revival which was mainly a recreation of the original by Hal Prince. I know critics were lukewarm to it at the time (and Boris Aronson was upset that his still stunning set was missing the streetlights endlessly going off to nowhere in the "limbo" scenes due to budget,) but for me the staging was a revelation. Brilliant Ron Field choreography (the Telephone Song dance especially), striking sets, and the whole production still seemed surprisingly fresh and modern to me.
Of course it helps I think that some changes were made. Don't Go works better for me as Cliff's song, compared to Why Should I Wake Up which is a beautiful song but seems way too self aware for Cliff's situation at that moment. The Emcee sings I Don't Care Much as he should, and I like the combined Money Song (and Meeskite being cut--it really only serves as a charm song when you have someone like Jack Gilford in the role)--the combined version of Money doesn't really add or subtract much though. But of course the main change is Masteroff re-wrote his libretto so that now it's clear that Cliff is at least bisexual (and arguably the only woman he's been with is Sally--of course in Isherwood's books, it's clear they never have sex.)
Masteroff (who seems to have written a ton of musicals that have never made it to Broadway--including his own musical of Anna Christe with some composer called Ed Thomas) said: "While a hit in its original version, the musical has changed over the years. "Sometimes people say to me now, 'How come the leading man wasn't gay (or at least bisexual) the way he is now?' " says Masteroff.
"Well, when we did 'Cabaret' in 1966, we figured there had to be a love story in those days, so [Cliff] became completely straight," he says. "Then, when we did the revival, we realized that Cliff and Sally couldn't just be a routine love story. We finally did what we should have done from the beginning--we made Cliff more bisexual. Of course, the movie had led the way to that too."
Anyway--I think the original staging, with the revisions, holds up remarkably well and is clearly groundbreaking. Of course its success paved the way for a lot of musicals, but I think you can also see a clear progression with it, the underated Zorba and leading to the great 70s musicals Sondheim did with the Hal Prince/Boris Aronson team.
I was thinking the same thing, Wynbi. The inclusion of "I don't Care Much" tips it for me. Brilliant moment...Brilliant song. Adds a real needed weight to what can be a rather frothy show.
The 1966 version WAS for Broadway audiences in 1966 what the movie was for movie audiences in 1972 and what the revival was for London and Broadway audience in 1998.
They all have good aspects to them the others don't:
* The 1951 Broadway production had Julie's Harris's Sally, which she repeated for the 1955 film with Laurence Harvey as Christopher. Isherwood said that her performance was more like the real Sally he had known in Berlin that the one he captured in his stories.
* The 1954 London production had a young Dame Dorothy Tutin as Sally, from all accounts a legendary performance.
* The 1966 Broadway version shocked Broadway audiences and had Joel Grey inventing the part of the Emcee. It also had Lotte Lenya, an actual refugee from the Third Reich, singing "What Would You Do?" and expressing the personal turmoil of every German and Austrian.
* The 1967 London cast had the young Dame Judi Dench as Sally.
* The movie has Fosse's direction and Liza and Joel Grey reimagining the Emcee.
* The 1998 revival had the further reimagined Emcee with Alan Cummings and a series of talented men and a reimagined Sally with an almost-other-worldly performance by Natasha Richardson.
Rather than engage in the pointless exercise of choosing which is "best," why not read the original Isherwood, read the John Van Druten play adaptation, watch the original 1955 movie, watch the clips of the various stage productions, and appreciate the remarkable work of art that Christopher Isherwood created: a depiction of a country falling prey to the most horrifying brutality mankind is capable of, seen through the eyes of a sensitive young writer who is fascinated by a visiting girl singer oblivious to the evil.
Well I can't do better than PJ's amazing post, especially since I've only seen the Studio54 version and the movie.
But I can unequivocally that the Studio54 version was one of the most thrilling, moving, and ultimately shocking experiences I have ever had in terms of live theater.
And the movie, as Eric mentioned is the an almost different show. It's also one of my favorite movies.
Oh, and for the record I didn't see Richardson or Cumming. I saw Susan Egan and Michael C. Hall who were both electrifying.
If you've never seen the 1955 movie, someone has put it up on YouTube in a playlist that has the trailer followed by the movie in 7 parts: I Am a Camera
Imagine it is 1966 on Broadway. The Holocaust has never been dramatized in a musical. Lotte Lenya, an actress who escaped from the Nazis with her husband, a great German composer whose work was denounced by the Nazis, stands on the stage and asks Cliff and Sally--and us!--what would we do if we were ordinary citizens faced with the onslaught of brutality. Would we stand up? Would we flee? Or would we accept it?
When Lotte Lenya sang that song, she was acknowledging a guilt almost too painful to imagine.
Regarding "Meeskite," while it doesn't propel plot, it does illustrate a key point: Schultz identities himself as German, just like his friends and neighbors. The song, with its Yiddishsms, brands him as the "other" and it leads directly to the blood-curdling reprise of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" that closes Act One. I imagine for audiences - particularly Jewish audiences - in 1966, the song, charming as it is, probably played as well with a sense of mounting dread. Schultz is like many German Jews who didn't sense the danger until it was too late.
As for Cabaret 1966 versus 1998, I always felt like the 98 version went too far, what with the bruised and track-marked chorus girls and boys. There was little sense of a once cultured, civilized society, growing debauched and amoral, something that the 1966 version and the movie depict gradually and with more subtlety (and what I feel is one of the things the show is actually about). Cabaret is set in 1929-1930, three years before Hitler became chancellor, and as the Nazi movement, once a lunatic faction, begins to gather strength and the support of the general citizenry in the wake of the Depression and German dissatisfaction from the outcome of World War I.
Ed Thomas, by the way, is the talented composer of the ill-fated Merrick musical, Mata Hari.
I disagree, Goth. It was a brilliantly theatrical stroke, based on reality: The Emcee, as depicted in all 3 versions--1966, film and 1998--would definitely have been one of the people rounded up by the Nazis for immoral activities.
"The Emcee, as depicted in all 3 versions--1966, film and 1998--would definitely have been one of the people rounded up by the Nazis for immoral activities."
Maybe if you believe the Emcee to be a real person. I've always thought of the Emcee as more of a non-human character, a spirit representing the times.
For purely practical reasons, I believe he's really there. Cliff can "see" him ("and there was a master of ceremonies...") The Kit Kat Klub itself is physically real, I don't see why he shouldn't be.
To answer the OP's question, I vastly prefer the Mendes revival. Cabaret is my very favorite show, and if I were to see a production today I'd make it that one.
I'm one of those rare people who doesn't really care for the movie. My biggest gripe is that it's not a musical, just a movie that has musical numbers in it, by which I mean that the songs don't arise from the scene, and all of the characters are aware that they're singing, probably songs they've heard before. Liza's great, but her Sally is not the Sally that exists on stage, and the movie's version of the title song is a completely different animal. In the movie there's hope for Sally, and the title song is just another number. But in the stage show, it's over for her, and when she sings the title song is when she finally realizes it.
My first experience with Cabaret was the film. I remember I became obsessed with it. And the I saw a regional production in the style of Mendes and fell in love. After watching clips of the original production and reading about it I was kind disappointed with several aspects of the show and its censorship. I understand that it was a very different audience back then, but still my favorite version would always be the 1998 revival.
I recently directed and was portraying the emcee on a high school production which sadly got shut down at the last minute. But playing the emcee in the style of the revival, even if it was only during the rehearsal process, was one of the most liberating experiences of my life.
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Posted: 3/2/13 at 11:38pm