| When the Emcee became the star of Cabaret, it changed; not all for the better | |
| Last Edit: Delvino 08:11 am EST 11/14/24 | |
| Posted by: Delvino 08:05 am EST 11/14/24 | |
| In reply to: "Cabaret" this afternoon - Delvino 08:05 pm EST 11/13/24 | |
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| I woke up thinking about the craft of Cabaret. How its story was conceived and shaped around I Am a Camera. That was its initial strength for audience investment: it is constructed around a tentative but fully dramatized romance between Sally Bowles and Cliff. The film rides that construct successfully. Joel Grey won a Tony and and Oscar for the Emcee. But in both cases as a supporting role. It hasn't been cast or performed thus since the film. And it creates focus issues magnified in Frecknall's outre world building. In this iteration, Frecknall is either bored with telling the traditional story or boxed in with its demands - and there are pages of Masteroff scenes to stage - and so they meander all over the repetitively revolving circular stage. Yesterday, you could feel it: the audience grows restless. The Clifford Bradshaw is a feckless cipher with a typewriter and a sexual history that has no impact since it's discussed rather than dramatized, as it is in the film. And with nothing to sing ("Why Should I Wake Up" long gone), he wanders in and out like a peripherical character instead of the ostensible audience access. The show was always about a "camera" on this world. But if you make it about the Emcee, the whole construct becomes lop-sided. And if you cast a less than compelling Clifford (sorry, this second here just isn't up to it), the audience has no idea of what they're following. Just my structural observation. The show was shaped around an American arriving in Berlin; here it's "get that guy off and go back to the night club." It deprives the final confrontations in the second act of emotional stakes - Sally and Cliff arguing over her abortion here feels labored and whiney between two people we aren't rooting for- and ends up confusing. |
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