Leed Grand Theatre – until 28 October 2017 and on tour around the UK
4****
The beautiful Grand theatre has been transformed into the Kit Kat club for the completely stunning but very dark new tour of Cabaret.
Deeply disturbing, the depravity and bleakness of Cabaret, is a snapshot of the dark underbelly of Berlin as the Nazis start their rise to power in the 1930s – before they stamped out the riotous anything-goes decadence portrayed at the Kit Kat Club.
Louise Redknapp is an attractive but wholesome Sally Bowles and puts over the big numbers with great assurance. But she never plumbs the emotional depths of the role. Whilst there is real desperate hope in Maybe This Time, and she seems to comes over as a plucky survivor, rather than someone teetering on the edge of despair. In this, her first stage role, she can belt out the numbers with her amazing voice, but more time in the role will help her to gain confidence with her acting.
Charles Hagerty’s Clifford Bradshaw, is the American bisexual writer who falls in love with Sally. He is excellent in the role, capturing the character’s disgust at the rise of Nazism and his joy when he believes that he and Sally may have a child together. You never feel that this mismatched couple are head-over-heels in love however, the relationship between the old landlady, Fraulein Schneider (Susan Penhaligon), and her Jewish admirer Herr Schultz (Lionel Haft) proves far more touching thanks to lovely autumnal performances from them both. The tender way in which Schultz, a greengrocer who sweetly courts her with bags of fresh fruit is both beautiful and gently romantic.
Will Young was born to play Emcee, with wonderfully over the top mannerisms, switching from fey and funny to threatening, to lovelorn and bereft with consummate ease. You can’t take your eyes off him when he is onstage. Young hits every queasy level of the oily and sardonic charm in a man who, as the still-shocking final moment makes clear, doesn’t see that he’s about to be steamrolled by some of the darkest forces in European history. His voice is gorgeous. His belligerent shouting of “To me!” of the faux-Nazi anthem Tomorrow Belongs to Me rings out with defiance but also self-delusion and his vocals are sublime as he manipulates the Kit Kat ensemble as if they were puppets on strings, dancing to his tune. The parallel with Hitler and the German population becomes unmistakable.
The ensemble are very good performing Javier De Frutos’s choreography with athletic beauty. The onstage band are terrific playing Kander and Ebb’s glorious musical numbers. Rufus Norris’s production never shies away from the growing menace as the people of Berlin enjoy their final year of freedom and decadence before the Nazis take power.
This is not a happy ending, the whole cast are damaged and the final 20 minutes of the show are shocking. The camp glamour of the pre-war Kit-Kat Club is gradually stripped away. The bare brick wall of the theatre is revealed. The fantasy is over. Young’s Emcee flits through the detritus, singing the ghostly I Don’t Care Much which will give you goose-bumps, the chorus are lined up against the back wall, their shivering nakedness a sharp contrast with the strutting, vampish displays of their bodies in earlier scenes. The symbolism obvious and thought provoking.
This production is just the complete musical package- a rare piece of musical theatre, challenging as well as entertaining. On tour around the UK, you must get a ticket