The staging of the musical Cabaret at the Bord Gáis theatre prompted a discussion on Arena about the period in which it was set, the political climate of the time influencing artistic expression and the social satire that went on within those walls. Kay Sheehy joined Sean Rocks to review the production, which stars Will Young as the Emcee and Louise Redknapp as Sally Bowles.
Sean wanted to take the piece back to its roots, its first iteration in prose form, by Christopher Isherwood. Kay explained that the environment Isherwood found himself in informed the work. He was an English writer in Berlin during the Weimar Republic. Kay painted a picture of a country suffering under the cost of reparations, clinging to any joy in life.
“There was hyperinflation, you had to carry a barrel-load of money around to buy even the smallest amount of groceries…the place was so poverty-stricken. But yet when things began to just slightly stabilise, people said ‘Let’s just spend the money, let’s just live because…we mightn’t be there tomorrow‘.
This is the climate that Cabaret is set in. A time of uncertainty and a certain frisson of possibility. Did this feed into an artistic flourishing, Sean wondered? Kay explained that the conditions were perfect to attract groups of artists and outsiders to hubs like Berlin.
“Under the Weimar Republic there was no censorship…no closing hours, there was no morality rules…everybody was moving to Berlin because they saw it as a place of freedom. And even though there was huge poverty and everybody was queueing for food, there was also theatres opening up, opera houses and cabarets.“
What went on at these cabaret clubs? Kay promised that it wasn’t all “sex and debauchery”. But those elements were certainly present.
“Sex was the favourite theme. Nudity was commonplace. Cocaine was the drug of choice. So there was songs, sex, monologue, dance, satire. And it was all held together by the Emcee, who introduced the acts and fought off the hecklers.”
Kay took Sean through the history of Cabaret from Isherwood’s novella, a stage version, a film and the Fosse-supported 1972 film starring Liza Minnelli, which won 8 Academy Awards. How does Kay rate this particular stage production of Cabaret?
“I think what Bob Fosse did in the film was so right, that he put almost all the music into the cabaret…whereas in this it’s a more classical musical where the other actors sing their songs to express their emotions. I would rather drama on the side and all the music and the hits concentrated in the Kit-Kat club. But that’s just me….there is a powerful end and it is beyond the sadness of the love story. It will chill anybody who goes to see it.“
Listen to the full discussion of the history of Cabaret on Arena here.