A nation gripped by economic instability and bitter partisanship, where extremists dominate the public discourse and demagogues denounce government power while strategizing to get it. America in 2010? Or Germany in 1930? Willkommen to Cabaret.
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Adapted by playwright Joe Masteroff, composer John Kander, and lyricist Fred Ebb from Christopher Isherwood’s semiautobiographical Berlin Stories, the landmark musical is set in Berlin just as the Nazis were evolving from a fringe movement into a mainstream political party. It juxtaposes the stories of two pairs of lovers: Aspiring American novelist Cliff Bradshaw stumbles across the sleazy Kit Kat Klub and its featured singer, Sally Bowles, who introduces him to a culture in which anything goes. Meanwhile, Cliff’s middle-aged landlady, Fraulein Schneider, is wooed by a Jewish grocer who plies her with fresh fruit and schnapps. They plan to get married, but an eruption of anti-Semitic violence prompts the Fraulein to call off the wedding.
The most startling changes to the show involve the expansion of one secondary role—that of Ernst Ludwig, a Nazi who hires Cliff to smuggle cash across the German border—and the creation of an entirely new one. As played by Robert McLean, Ernst emerges here as an increasingly threatening and powerful figure who at one point shoots a Jew onstage. The new character is a young boy, played by Kyle Erkonen, who sings the show’s Nazi anthem “Tomorrow Belongs to Me.” Hawkins’s final image is of Ernst, his whore consort, and the boy, depicted as the ideal Aryan family.
