Interview: Richard Katz of CABARET at The Kit Kat Club At The Playhouse Theatre

Cabaret slinked its way into London in November 2021, with the Playhouse Theatre being transformed into the Kit Kat Club. Infinite rave reviews later, original cast members Jessie Buckley (as Sally Bowles) and Eddie Redmaybe (as the Emcee) changed hands with Amy Lennox and Fra Fee, who have maintained the hype since.

BroadwayWorld speaks to actor Richard Katz about his entrance into director Rebecca Frecknall's thrilling version of Kander and Ebb's legendary musical as Herr Schultz. We chat about his extensive theatre CV and the excitement around going into a show that is already soaring (all discussed with a delightful amount of fan-boy energy, which is delightful to bask in).

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For anyone who has missed the hype around the stamp Rebecca Frecknall has made on Cabaret, what's different about this version?

One of the key things is the prologue. The minute the audience arrives, they are taken through the stage door. They don't go through the front-of-house. They emerge into the auditorium, into the front-of-house space and there's already a lot happening. There's dancing and music.

It's so useful for us as performers because the audience is already implicated. They already feel like they're in East Berlin. All these strange human beings are occupying the stage area and become part of your [the actor's] work. So, when the narrative has to embrace the darker aspects of the show, the audience is faced with a problem. The element about the rise of fascism [for example]: I love that the audience is given that problem. Theatre happens in the imagination of the audience, really. By giving them that 'help', allowing them to feel that their imagination is already working overtime, that's the key difference.

How's it going? Are you having fun?

I'm up and running - I've done nine shows! It's going okay. It's very strange because the majority of the time you start at the beginning of the process with everyone else. You can climb the mountain together. I've done one cast change before (in War Horse), but there were about twenty of us all joining. This time, I was the only cast member coming on that specific day. So, I just had to get up to speed and jump into this big machine.

It's such a lovely show to be in; especially a show that is confident and happy and works. It's chock-full of brilliant human beings. What an absolute delight.

Tell us a bit about your character...

I'm playing Herr Schultz who owns a fruit shop in Berlin, and he rents a room from Fraulein Schneider who runs [a] boarding house. What he has in the show is a love story: we don't really know anything about his past except that he is a widower, he's Jewish, and he has his shop. His character is often cut! I think he brings some heart and soul to the show. You see him trying to work out how the [couple] can exist together, and for the majority of the time that is such a beautiful love story. The fact we're in our 50's doesn't matter...

Yet, the personal and the political are always running in parallel, of course. So, their desire for happiness is overwhelmed by the bigger picture. But it's quite a hopeful and beautiful story.

Have the creative team kept the pineapple song? It's very important to me that they have!

Yes, and the audience loves it so much. I'm a comic actor, really. I'm a clown. I have quite a good comic instinct and I had no idea how funny the audience would find it. They just eat it up with a spoon.

And... I get to sing with Vivien Parry [as Fraulein Schneider]! Bloody hell. I'm just an idiot and here I am. My goodness!

Had you seen this version of Cabaret before (either with the original cast with Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne or since)?

I've seen it a few times during my rehearsal period - but I didn't see it with Eddie and Jessie. Fra [Fee, as the Emcee] and Amy [Lennox, as Sally Bowles] are a pair of magicians. They are so amazing. I have an entrance every night just after Amy sings "Cabaret" and honestly, I stand in the little wing bit waiting to go on with my jaw on the floor. We did it last night (a Monday night), and she's not pulling any punches. She is absolutely giving it everything she's got. Every single time. Fra as well. What an absolute pleasure just to get to hang out and to be in a company full of brilliant human beings.

You can really hear it in your voice how much you like working with them. It's so lovely to hear.

It's funny because I've been working for thirty years. But this world - the musical theatre world - is not one I know very well. I did The Lorax [at The Old Vic] a few years ago, which is a show with songs. But this is a whole different beast. Everywhere you look, people are at the very top of their game.

It's really easy as performers to be unsure of ourselves. That's the joy of it really, it should be fun. But it should also be a bit scary and dangerous. That's where the good stuff happens. There's a [David] Bowie quote: 'if you're comfortable then you're in the wrong place as an artist'. You have to flirt with that vulnerability. I am surrounded by brilliance... so your brain goes 'it's probably alright'.

But I still have to sing. Every. Night.

As a non-performer, I think that will always remain amazing to me.

It's just a part of my equipment I don't get to use very often. Technically, if I am doing Hamlet, and there are things that I am not sure about, I'm pretty confident that I will know how to work out why something isn't quite right. As soon as you have to start making it sound pretty, or at least in tune, you're using a whole other load of equipment. I haven't had some of the vocabulary... I just don't know it. A couple of times in rehearsals I've had to ask what certain notes mean because I don't have to use those things very often.

You've worked a lot with Complicité, and as a company, they are so creative and often involve an audience in exciting ways. Is that the type of theatre you feel excited about?

Absolutely. I've done (maybe) ten Complicité shows over the years. There's normally a gang of us, with Simon McBurney at the helm, and we have half a dozen little ideas. Sometimes there's something solid - like Master and the Margarita, which is a 400-page piece of brilliance. But usually, that's just a place to jump off from. We think about what each show needs. That moment of delivery - like Rebecca has done with the prologue - that is about complicity for thinking about the world.

The theatre is live and dangerous; it should look like you've got a solid plan but it should also look like that plan could be derailed at any moment. I think about those high-speed trains as they go around a corner and they tip into the bend in the track. That's where the good stuff happens - when you're tipping and things might fall over. The train might fall if we push it hard enough.

You have covered so much in the UK theatre, is there anything left you'd like to do?

Truthfully, if I could do anything now or if I had my time again, I would have invested more time in directing more shows. In terms of a vision: being an actor is sometimes like being at the bottom of the funnel. By the time the work gets to us, someone's written something, others have agreed to put it on and someone is directing it. So, all of that filters down the creative funnel to the actors, and I quite fancy the idea of being at the top of the funnel. I have no plan for that... as a 20-year-old perhaps I should have been investing in that part of my armoury. It's quite hard to feed a new rhythm into that of being a jobbing actor.

I feel like people are pretty sold on Cabaret - but why do you think people should see it?

Both on and off stage you're going to see a bunch of people at the top of their game in a show that is full of danger and full of funny and silly things. It's silly hats and funny voices... like all theatre. But sometimes, theatre is a doorway to a place of wonder. I think that - and felt this through seeing the show before being in it - it's a thing that is full of wonder.

Cabaret is currently booking to November 2022

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

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