Review: Rebekah Scallet Directs a Sobering and Gripping Production of CABARET at New Jewish Theatre

New Jewish Theatre opens their 2025 season with a sobering production of CABARET. Directed by NJT’s Rebekah Scallet, this production of the Kander and Ebb classic is a fresh take on musical that premiered nearly 60-years ago. Scallet’s stunning production is edgy, sexy, and provocative. 

CABARET is one of the classic pieces of the musical theater cannon that still packs an emotional wallop. It studies the harsh realities of the rise of the Nazi Party and its effects on people living in Berlin. The poignancy of this piece hits differently as the story unfolds on the campus of St. Louis’ Jewish Community Center.  

Kander and Ebb composed a musical that was way before its time with a piercing story filled with sexually forward themes. CABARET arrived on Broadway on the heels of 1964’s beloved FIDDLER ON THE ROOF. The serious themes paved the way for Kander and Ebb’s commercially successful musical CHICAGO, and countless other musicals that take on serious subject matter. Kander and Ebb pushed dramatic musical storytelling to new heights.  

While the current Broadway revival of CHICAGO has enjoyed a three decade long run, it is my opinion that CABARET is Kander and Ebb’s most prolific work. Its antisemitic themes are still relevant a century after its 1929 setting in Berlin. The juxtapositional story telling uses the seedy nightclub as an escape from reality. The Emcee beckons the patrons of The Kit Kat Club to “leave their troubles at the door.”  

Scallet leaves her audience stunned with dramatically affecting story telling. She has assembled a charismatic cast who lean into their natural chemistry. Scallet invites her audience into the Kit Kat Club and cleverly tells the story of Sally and Cliff using just eleven talented actors to fill multiple roles with three playing instruments in Carter Haney’s on-stage band. 

The multi-talented cast is led by Spencer Davis Milford as The Emcee in an androgynous, bravado filled performance. Milford’s disconcerting lurking presence foreshadows the looming threat outside the debauchery of the cabaret. His original take on the role is more Roddy McDowell “Clockwork Orange” with his wide mascara enhanced eyes than the characterizations of actors who have filled the role previously. He sings the Kander and Ebb score with delicious ease and leads the company in the flawless execution of Ellen Isom’s sensually seductive original choreography. Isom’s imaginative choreography is titillating.  

Hailey Medrano’s Sally Bowles is more confidently self-assured than tragic. She gives Sally a carefree and selfish spirit. Medrano painfully captures Sally’s breakdown in a lamentable performance of the titular song but never reduces Sally to a victim. She breaks Cliff’s and the audience’s heart with feigned composure. Her vainglorious Sally is disillusioned by another failed relationship. Medrano’s is a force. Her acting is first rate, she comfortably handles the score, and her chemistry with Dustin Lane Petrillo (Cliff Bradshaw) is magnetic. 

It is the magnetism and attraction between Medrano and Petrillo, and Jane Paradise (Fraulein Schneider) and Dave Cooperstein (Herr Schultz), that gives this production its teeth and makes it soar. Credit Scallet for her casting choices. The skill of Medrano, Petrillo, Paradise, and Cooperstein to capture the character’s anguish and heartache cement the story’s grim acridness.  

Petrillo is beguiling as Cliff. He shows how Cliff’s naiveté is quickly robbed by Sally’s promiscuity, the changing political landscape, and the seediness of Berlin. He plays Cliff as a young man who allows his experimentation and awakenings to shape his rapid maturation. In his hands, Cliff is smart, innocent but self-assured. Neither he, nor Medrano, create pitiful characters, instead they are a couple who are driven apart by woeful incompatibility. 

Jane Paradise is the acting and vocal standout as Fraulein Schnieder. Her empathy-inducing performance gives Schneider lasting indelibility. She gives the spinster an ingénue-like quality as she falls for Herr Schultz. Her optimism, turned to fear, is palpable. She has an entrancing presence, a stellar singing voice, and a wonderful connection to Cooperstein as Herr Schutz.  

Cooperstein is equally engaging as Schultz. His Schultz has a boyish-like awkward quality as he develops feelings for Schneider. He gives their romance an authentic believability. Their brief romance is both sweet and tragic. They are the victims of the changing societal and political landscape. His melancholic portrayal is perceptible. 

Scallet told Broadway World in an earlier interview that she wanted to lean into Fraulein Schnider and Herr Schultz relationship. She said it mirrors both the horrors of the past and the current antisemitism in today’s climate. The performances she drew from her actors give this production a stinging bite.  

Aarron Fischer (Ernst Ludwig), Caroline Pillow (Fraulein Kost), and the rest of the cast deliver memorable performances. Pillow and Fischer’s goosebump inducing reprise of “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” chillingly sends the audience to intermission with a foreboding dread. Fischer’s towering height and booming voice signaled the inevitable rise of Nazi power, and his presence was matched by the captivating Pillow’s powerful vocals.  

Scallet maximized the chilling ends of each act with gasp-inducing intensity. Her immersive staging and blocking drew the audience into the narrative and David Blake’s versatile, tiered set design. Blake’s set welcomed the audience into the immersive world from the moment they stepped into the theater. His designs moved beyond the walls of the back box to welcome the audience with painted Kit Kat Club signage and a decorative chandelier. Blake’s construction was the best of the design elements. 

Blake’s set and Scallet’s storytelling was elevated by Justin Smith’s balanced and ambient sound design. Denisse Chavez lighting design was effective but often left principal performers in the dark during solos or vocal work. While this may have been an intentional choice it seemed a bit overlooked. Chavez is a gifted lighting designer, nominated for two St. Louis Theater Circle Awards for work her last season, but this design seemed uncharacteristically inconsistent. 

Costume Designer Michelle Friedman Siler puts the (fishnet) hose in lederhosen with her tastefully suggestive choices. She is careful not to offend the NJT’s Midwest conservative audience but still outfits her cast with suggestively appropriate wardrobe. Her bedazzled pants that The Emcee rocks in the second act are stunners. Siler’s magnificently constructed pieces harken back to the modestly edgy costume designs of early productions of CABARET. 

Carter Haney does fine work in his debut as a Musical Director leading a band of six other musicians. The actors were well-prepared to deliver confident renditions of their solos, and the chorus numbers were well rehearsed. The accompaniment was mostly pleasing with a few moments where the band went awry, most notably on “Marriage.” Haney’s effort was impressive for a college student getting his first shot as musical director, arranger, and conductor.  

New Jewish Theatre’s production of CABARET is a grim reminder of the early days of the Nazi reign in Germany. It is appropriately risqué and bawdy and artfully staged on David Blake’s beautiful set. It is filled with impressive performances from the entire cast, especially the original characterizations developed by Spener Davis Milford, Hailey Medrano, Dustin Lane Petrillo, and Jane Paradise. Rebekah Scallet’s storytelling reflects on the two melancholy love stories with a direful reminder of the past and a warning about current day antisemitism. She hammers home the funereal denouement like a railroad worker driving spikes with a maul.  

New Jewish Theatre’s sobering production of CABARET is gripping. It continues at the J Wool Studio Theater on the Jewish Community Center Campus through April 6, 2025. Click the link below to purchase tickets.  

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