50 Favourite Musicals: 7: CABARET (1966) (John Kander / Fred Ebb)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life.

First performed: 1966, Broadhurst Theatre, NY

First seen by me: 1986, Strand Theatre, London

Productions seen: four

Score: John Kander / Fred Ebb

Book: Joe Masteroff

Plot: Writer Cliff Bradshaw arrives in 1930s Berlin seeking inspiration.  Renting a room at Fraulein Schneider's boarding house, Cliff then visits the seedy Kit Kat Klub - presided over by the mysterious MC - and meets extravagant English performer Sally Bowles.  Sally moves in with Cliff the next day and their love affair grows alongside Fraulein Schneider's tentative relationship with Jewish shopkeeper Herr Schultz.  But the darkening shadows of the Nazis are closing in...

Five memorable numbers: CABARET, TOMORROW BELONGS TO ME, WILKOMMEN, WHAT WOULD YOU DO, PERFECTLY MARVELLOUS

CABARET has infiltrated people's imaginations for 54 years, largely due to Bob Fosse's iconic 1972 screen version with the brilliant star wattage of Liza Minnelli as Sally Bowles.  It seems remarkable that the film was released only 6 years after the show's Broadway debut but it is a completely different entity to it's source.  Fosse dropped most of the score, any songs that were sung outside the Kit Kat Klub onstage were jettisoned to give his film a more realistic feel; a few sneaked through as background music and of course "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" provided a magnificent set-piece in a beer garden.  So a first-time viewer of the show who has a knowledge of the film - like me in 1986 - is thrown initially with the original storyline.   But CABARET has seen additions and deletions from it's score with almost every stage revival as tastes and directorial conceits change.

The first attempt to musicalize John Van Druten's play I AM A CAMERA based on Christopher Isherwood's GOODBYE TO BERLIN stories was by Sandy Wilson, writer of THE BOY FRIEND - just dwell on that for a minute - but the rights transferred to Harold Prince who decided his SHE LOVES ME writer Joe Masteroff could provide the book, with the score being written by John Kander and Fred Ebb, only their second musical.  The show opened at the Broadhurst Theatre, going on to win 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical.  This production included British actress Jill Haworth as Sally, Joel Grey as the MC, Lotte Lenya as Fraulein Schneider and Jack Gilford as Herr Schultz.  The production transferred to two other theatres before closing in 1969, and by then Prince had reproduced the show at London's Palace Theatre with Judi Dench as Sally (her musical debut), Lila Kedrova as Fraulein Schneider and Peter Sallis as Herr Schultz.  As I mentioned, I first saw CABARET when Gillian Lynne directed a revival at the Strand Theatre which felt off-kilter thanks to an over-emphasis on Wayne Sleep's MC to the detriment of Kelly Hunter's Sally, a real star turn.

Sam Mendes staged his acclaimed revival at the Donmar in 1993, starring Alan Cumming as the MC, Jane Horrocks as Sally and Sara Kestelman as Fraulein Schneider.  Setting it within the cabaret itself and ramping up the sleaze, songs were dropped while others were added.  In 1998 Mendes' production, now co-directed by Rob Marshall, made it to New York where it ran for four years, first at the site-specific Kit Kat Klub then, very appropriately, at Studio 54.  The cast was led again by Cumming with Natasha Richardson as Sally and both won Tony Awards as did the show for Best Musical Revival, losing other awards to THE LION KING juggernaut.  Mendes moving the MC to the centre of the production also meant he closed the show by stripping off an overcoat to reveal he was dressed as a concentration camp inmate.  Taking the sleaze and Nazis route, Rufus Norris directed a London revival in 2006 at the Lyric which starred Anna Maxwell Martin as Sally, James Dreyfus as the MC, Sheila Hancock as Fraulein Schneider and Geoffrey Hutchings as Herr Schultz.  No doubt feeling the need to top the Mendes final image, Norris had the MC joining the Cabaret dancers huddled upstage under a shower of Zyklon-B flakes and the sound of hissing echoing around the stage.  Hey Mr Director... we, the audience DO get the ending of the show.  One wonders how the next revival will end, it's almost like the directors are desperately covering up that they are actually directing a Broadway musical.

CABARET should be higher in the chart, it is at #7 only because it has suffered with misguided productions that the show struggles to overcome.

The obvious choice would be a clip of the Fosse film but I have gone with the original 1966 production at the Tony Awards - just look at the size of the cast - with Joel Grey's MC bidding us Wilkommen.... and who can ever refuse that invitation?

HIGH SOCIETY at the Old Vic... Flat Fizz

The irritating proliferation of films-turned-into-stage-musicals in recent years had several forerunners.  In 1987 Richard Eyre, five years after his magnificent production of GUYS AND DOLLS at the National Theatre, gave musicals another go - only this time in the West End - with his own stage adaptation of the 1956 film HIGH SOCIETY at the Victoria Palace.

It proved a disappointing affair despite the luminous Natasha Richardson as Tracy, she wore a Sue Blane-designed yellow dress in the second act that has stayed long in the memory.

Another adaptation, this time by US playwright Arthur Kopit, opened and closed on Broadway in 1998 and this version appeared in 2005 at the Open Air Regents Park which then unsuccessfully transferred to the Shaftesbury.

And now the Kopit version is revived at the Old Vic, rather puzzlingly ending Kevin Spacey's tenure as Artistic Director.  In his first season, Spacey revived the musical's source play THE PHILADELPHIA STORY so he obviously has some affection for the piece but not enough to appear in the musical version.

It is on for a rather ambitious four month run but from the look of the Dress Circle on the night we went it will be interesting to see if it stays the course.  As I watched the show something niggled away at me, a thought that had come to me when blogging about another show - but what show? What niggle?  Luckily for you, Constant Reader, I remembered.

Last December we saw the stage adaptation of WHITE CHRISTMAS - oddly enough another film-to-stage version of a Bing Crosby musical.  I have always thought HIGH SOCIETY a fairly innocuous film musical but one that seems to be held in high regard.  Along with WHITE CHRISTMAS, what the film succeeds in is being a star vehicle with the performers all playing up to their persona's: Crosby is witty and wise, Frank Sinatra is cynical and wisecracking, Celeste Holm is a friendly sidekick, Louis Armstrong is all grins and eye-popping and Grace Kelly... well, she's just Grace Kelly.

And here is the troubling thing when films like these are transplanted to the stage... where are the Star performers needed to make them work - genuine stars with comparable persona's to make you forget the originals who we all know?  You can cast perfectly fine actors but if they do not have that pure star wattage how will they ever eclipse the originals and if they cannot do that, what is the point in staging it in the first place?

Both the Eyre and the current version go the fine actor route: Eyre cast Trevor Eve, Richardson, Stephen Rea and Angela Richards as the four leads while here director Maria Friedman has picked the lesser-wattage of Rupert Young, Kate Fleetwood, Jamie Parker and Annabel Scholey.

But both productions have seemed to be in denial, they want to stage HIGH SOCIETY but too often what they really want to do is THE PHILADELPHIA STORY with songs which are too different things completely.

Of the ten songs in Cole Porter's film score, Richard Eyre used eight adding five other Porter compositions while Friedman uses only seven from the film with a whacking twelve others interpolated.  It all smacks of not being sure of their source doesn't it?  As Eyre did with Richardson, Maria Friedman has directed Kate Fleetwood to play it as Katharine Hepburn but Fleetwood's strangled attempt at a Bryn Mawr accent at times made her sound retarded which was a shame because when she sang she had a very strong voice.

Friedman directed the last revival of MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG in 2012 which had critics raving but I found to be horribly over-pitched and she has done the same thing here - what should be champagne fizz is more like Iron Bru.  By and large loud and over-stated, it all smacks of Friedman's own over-emphatic singing style where consonants are hit like a cow's arse with a banjo.

Fleetwood playing effervescent comes across as a loud woman waving her arms over her head and there is horrible over-playing from Richard Grieve as Tracy's soon-to-be husband and Ellie Bamber as the know-it-all younger sister.  The impossibly tall Rupert Young is personable in the Crosby role but little more and the best performances come from Barbara Flynn as Mrs Lord and the double act of Jamie Parker and Annabel Scholey as the gossip magazine journalists gate-crashing the wedding.  But again Parker who is usually so reliable, had moments when he over-pitched the performance not only to the back of the theatre but to Waterloo Station up the road.

In lieu of Louis Armstrong Friedman has jazz pianist Joe Stilgoe appear occasionally and like his father Richard, a little of him goes a long way.  Friedman's over-emphasis stretches to the dance numbers too, they seem so set on being showstopping that they go on and on and on, losing the shape of the actual song and one claps more out of relief that they have stopped than anything else.  The very long second act opener at least showcased the excellent tapping of dancer Omari Douglas.

There is no reason I can think of for this production to be staged in the round unless it was to cram more people in to their hoped-for money-spinner but Peter Mumford's lighting helps set some atmosphere.

Can we now please put this show to bed as non-workable and stick to the original film?

My other belated theatre blog is for the latest production at the Donmar, Eugene O'Neill's 1921 play of redemption and a life on the ocean wave, ANNA CHRISTIE.
It's strange that it has taken this long for the play to appear at the Donmar as it seems a shoe-in for any smallish theatre needing a solid well-made prestige play - it also only has four major roles! It has not been seen in the West End since Natasha Richardson's award-winning performance nineteen years ago at the Young Vic - when she repeated the role the next year in NY opposite Liam Neeson it led to their marriage and her re-locating to live there.
The piece is most well-known for providing the vehicle for Greta Garbo's debut in talking pictures in 1930. Two years elapsed between the release of Al Jolson's THE JAZZ SINGER and the release of ANNA CHRISTIE and during that time Garbo had starred in 6 silent films as M-G-M searched for just the right film to launch their Swedish star onto the now listening public. But Anna's Swedish background gave Garbo the the perfect role and she went on to garner her first Academy Award nomination for her performance. Her opening lines, "Gimme a whisky, ginger ale on the side... and don't be stingy baby" have entered film history. But what of the Donmar production? The production is directed by Rob Ashford who was responsible for the theatre's 2009 revival of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and both productions share the same downbeat spit-and-sawdust atmosphere - how different to his HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING which we saw earlier this year in New York!

O'Neill's play tells the story of Anna, a young woman who comes east to the docks of New York to find the father who entrusted her to relatives on a farm after the death of her mother while he worked on his coal barge. Old Chris is nervously excited about seeing her after so long, only knowing from her infrequent letters that she worked as a nursemaid in Minnesota. His drink-sozzled mistress Marthy knows better when she spots Anna enter the dockside bar and their wary, cagey conversation reveals that Anna was working in a brothel until arrested and sent to jail. All options shot, she now wants her father to support her. During a storm at sea, Chris and Anna rescue sailors from a shipwreck and the last one saved is Mat Burke, a belligerent Irish stoker whose rollicking Blarney steamrollers Anna into a love affair. When Mat and Chris battle for the right to 'own' Anna, she angrily denounces them both and the long line of men who have used and abused her. Confronted with the truth of Anna's past how forgiving will her father and lover be?

O'Neill certainly powers his plot along in only four scenes and, despite the clunky repetition of Old Chris' simile of "that old devil sea", his rangy and muscular dialogue still keeps you rolling with the punches. He certainly created one of the great female roles of the last century in Anna and it's a shame we have not seen more actresses have the opportunity to play her.
Ruth Wilson played her with Anna's raw nerves fully exposed: from her first appearance staring down the hungry looks of the bar-room men to her last, alone again but stronger than before, she delivered a powerful performance which would have been a great performance if she had found more space for Anna's humanity.

The performance of the evening however was from Jude Law as Mat. Proving to be as much of a force of nature as the storm in which he makes his first appearance, this was the best I have ever seen him on stage. Even if his brogue was tempest tossed from Kerry in Ireland to Kingston in Jamaica, Law gave such a bravura performance that you could not take your eyes off him. For once he gave a performance which justified his star status.
David Hayman wrestled with the potentially deadly role of the salty Sveedish sea dog and eventually managed to overcome the hurdy-gurdy accent and repetitive dialogue to give a well-rounded performance.

Jenny Galloway proved that when it comes to scene-stealing she's the best around. However she really needs to find a play that allows her the chance to do her larceny more than once - here as in CAUSE CELEBRE and AFTER THE DANCE she only appeared in one scene! Although not written by O'Neill it would have been nice if Ashford had interpolated the extra scene included in the 1930 film for Marie Dressler as Marthy when she turns up begging while Anna and Mat are in a Coney Island beer garden. The production was aided immeasurably by Paul Wills' adaptable set, Howard Harrison's evocative moody lighting and Adam Cork's sound design. All in all, another memorable Donmar visit.

Sad news this afternoon about the death of Lynn Redgrave aged 67, only a month after her brother Corin's.Much has been made of Lynn's feelings of being a 'spare thumb' while growing up in her theatrical family but in the same year as Vanessa was acclaimed at the RSC for her performances in AS YOU LIKE IT and TAMING OF THE SHREW, Lynn and Corin made their London stage debut's in Tony Richardson's MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at the Royal Court with Rita Tushingham.Lynn then appeared at the Old Vic in the first years of the National Theatre and showing the range of her ability, from Coward (Jackie in HAY FEVER) to Shakespeare (Margaret iin MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING), Farquhar (Rose in THE RECRUITING OFFICER) to Brecht (Kattrin in MOTHER COURAGE). She made the move to film with a supporting role in her brother-in-law Richardson's TOM JONES then to co-starring in THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES as Rita Tushingham's more gregarious, wordly roommate which earned her a BAFTA nomination.However she gained her biggest success by switching personas in Silvio Narizzano's GEORGY GIRL. Now playing the gauche and unloved flatmate to Charlotte Rampling's glamorous but nasty friend, Lynn's eye-catching performance made her an unlikely heroine for the swinging sixties audience and she found herself nominated with sister Vanessa for a Best Actress Academy Award - Vanessa was nominated for MORGAN: A SUITABLE CASE FOR TREATMENT - but ultimately they both lost to Elizabeth Taylor's Martha in WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Personally I can't say I am a big fan of either film - I guess you had to be there to appreciate them.However she only made two more films in the 60s - SWINGING TIME again with Tushingham as two Northern girls seeing fame in swinging London and as the Sergeant Major's daughter in THE VIRGIN SOLDIERS.

Her work then seemed to proceed in a haphazard manner, no doubt due to family commitments - she married John Clark in 1967 and had children in 1968, 1970 and 1981.

Take for instance the first few years on the 1970s:
1970: appears in LAST OF THE MOBILE HOT SHOTS, a little-seen or remembered Sidney Lumet film with James Coburn based on a Tennessee Williams flop "The Seven Descents of Myrtle" with a script by Gore Vidal (!); appears at the Garrick with Richard Briers in Michael Frayn's debut play THE TWO OF US.

1971: appears at the Royal Court in David Hare's debut play SLAG with Anna Massey and Barbara Ferris; appears in an Italian spaghetti western with Vanessa's next amour Franco Nero called VIVA LA MUERTE...TUA. 1972: appears in Woody Allen's EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK as a Queen seducing Allen's Court Jester and in the woeful EVERY LITTLE CROOK AND NANNY as a woman posing as a Nanny to a mafia Don.

1973: appears in the little-seen Jack Gold film of Peter Nichols' savage comedy THE NATIONAL HEALTH which contrasts the run-down reality of a failing NHS hospital with the antiseptic fantasy of a hospital soap opera; appears at Greenwich Theatre in BORN YESTERDAY directed by Tom Stoppard.

She then appeared on Broadway in MY FAT FRIEND with George Rose and John Lithgow and settled in America permanently. Her career in the 1970s then drifted along with acclaimed performances on Broadway - a Tony nomination as Vivie in MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION, ST, JOAN directed by her husband - and appearances on US TV. Her only other big screen appearances at this time were as real-life madam Xaviera Hollander in the utterly godawful THE HAPPY HOOKER and, to better effect, as the nymphomaniac fashion designer in the disaster movie send-up THE BIG BUS. Lynn was cast in the Glenda Jackson role in the tv spin-off of Jackson's film HOUSE CALLS but this ended in turmoil with Universal TV sacking her in 1981. Costly legal proceedings dragged on for years - she claimed she was sacked for breast-feeding her newborn baby Annabel and if nothing else the case did much to highlight the continued problems mothers faced with this situation in the workplace. However the case all but bankrupted her before it was thrown out of court. Needless to say the 1980s saw her concentrate heavily on US TV work - she became a spokesperson for Weight Watchers - and the occasional stage appearance. The 1990s saw a return to the London stage on two occasions - the only times I saw her onstage. She was an emotional Masha with Vanessa and niece Jemma in Chekhov's THREE SISTERS at the Queens in 1990 but the production wasn't well received and the press gloated when Lynn vilified Vanessa for her condemnation of the first Iraq invasion. They had also just filmed an unnecessary tv remake of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE which truly deserved condemning.

However for Lynn there was always material in her family and in 1993 she wrote and starred in SHAKESPEARE FOR MY FATHER on Broadway. An exploration-cum-exorcism of her feelings towards her father as viewed through the words of his beloved Shakespeare, she received a Tony Award nomination for the piece and I saw it when it had a month-long run a the Haymarket.By then she had co-starred in the Oscar-winning SHINE and in 1998 received a second Academy Award nomination, this time for Best Supporting Actress, for her role as James Whale's disapproving maid in GODS AND MONSTERS.

However - in a seemingly endless pattern of good/bad strokes - this was the same year her personal life was splashed over the newspapers. In 1991 her assistant had a baby boy and refused to name the father. The assistant later married Lynn's son but this marriage foundered. in 1998 - at a Thanksgiving dinner yet! - Lynn's longtime husband John Clark admitted he was the father. He had tried to start the relationship up again with the assistant who was having none of it and was threatening to tell Lynn.The marriage's dirty linen was washed in public for two years before a divorce was granted in 2000. She made her final appearance on the London stage in 2001 at the Piccadilly Theatre in the National Theatre revival of NOISES OFF when she replaced Patricia Hodge for the west-end run. The same year she received an OBE but in 2002 she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Her battle against the disease and subsequent mastectomy and chemotherapy formed the basis of a 2004 book with photographs by daughter Annabel but by then Lynn had already won a Drama Desk award for Best Supporting Actress for an off-Broadway production of Alan Bennett's "Talking Heads" monologue MISS FOZZARD FINDS HER FEET.

Her role in Maugham's THE CONSTANT WIFE won her another Tony award nomination in 2005 and in the same year, she appeared alongside Vanessa and niece Natasha in James Ivory's sadly rather leaden THE WHITE COUNTESS.

More supporting roles followed in films and US television - her last screen role was a guest star in UGLY BETTY - and she was working on stage almost to the end in NIGHTINGALE, another 'family' play she wrote, this time based on the life of her maternal grandmother.
Her career was certainly full and varied but one can't help wondering what greater legacy she might have left had she not moved to America at such a crucial point in her career.

 

Oh ker-fuck.  I know where I want to be on Monday January 12th. And it ain't here.

For one night only Natasha Richardson, Victor Garber, Christine Baranski, Laura Benanti and Vanessa Redgrave will appear in a fundraising concert version of Stephen Sondheim's A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC. Vanessa sings Sondheim!

The ticket prices would bring on a new credit crunch - the cheapest at the back of the mezzanine being $150.

NIGHT MUSIC is being staged at the end of the year at the Menier Chocolate Factory and I have tickets for December. Only instead of Vanessa Redgrave they have Maureen Lipman.  To quote one of the songs "Every Day A Little Death".