Where Are Your Troubles Now?

Cabaret at Studio 54

 

Michelle Williams, Alan Cumming and the Kit Kat Girls in Cabaret.

            Though I wasn’t lucky enough to see the previous run of Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, which premiered at Studio 54 in 1998 and ran through 2004 with a series of increasingly unlikely celebrity replacements (bringing to mind the current revival of that other Kander and Ebb classic, Chicago), I have been buffeted over the past year with news of the similarities between that production and the one now playing at the same venue through January 4^th of next year.  (I would be willing to bet the ridiculous price of a ticket to Cabaret that the Roundabout Theatre, strapped for cash as it is, will soon be extending the run, making room for a new list of replacements.  Hilary Duff, I’m sure, will make a serviceable Sally.)  For one, I’ve been told, that devilish Master of Ceremonies is again portrayed by Alan Cumming, one of the finest stage actors alive, and the production is again co-directed by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall, two of the finest stage innovators of our time.  The imposing and gorgeous set design is once again by Robert Brill, and the shabby yet eye-catching costume design by William Ivey Long.  Most important, of course, is that the sleekly beautiful score by the John Kander and the now deceased Fred Ebb remains the same, but somehow that hasn’t come up more than in passing.  Did I mention Alan Cumming?

            If I haven’t, I should have.  Don’t mistake my list of similarities to that previous production to be a put-down of the current one.  From the perspective of one unfamiliar, if the 1998 production was anything like this one, it was probably unmissable then, too.

            For though Mr. Brill’s Kit Kat Club is a wonderful dreamscape and the marshaling of Messrs. Marshall and Mendes is unforgettable, this revival and, presumably, the 1998 revival are dominated by the enormous, life-changing, genre-bending performance of Alan Cumming as the dastardly Emcee, in a performance that won him a Tony and, if not for late announcements in eligibility this year, probably would have again.  Slimily slinking around the battlements of his castle, the Kit Kat Club, the Emcee, more sickly-pale snake than human, looks down upon the horror of the approaching Nazis and laughs, an agent of chaos in his native element.  Accompanied by the marvelous band, doubling as the ensemble as in 1998, Mr. Cumming is hypnotizing during the immortal “Wilkommen,” revelatory during “Money,” and suddenly terrifying during “If You Could See Her.”  The audience can’t help but follow Mr. Cumming above anyone else, and suddenly it becomes clear, however implausibly, that under Mr. Mendes’s direction Cabaret is, indeed, the story of the Emcee.  He accepts the Nazis at first as wickedly fun, is consumed by the uproar of their pseudo-patriotism (especially during the brilliantly written Rhineland pastiche number, “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” when he flashes a swastika-besmirched buttock), and then gradually realizes what he’s endorsing, culminating in Mr. Mendes’s shocking ending, as powerful as ever here.  It’s a tour-de-force performance, what a critic could call the performance of a lifetime had Mr. Cumming, incredibly, not already done all of this before.  Broadway should prostrate itself in celebration of his return.

            It is in such a way that the A-story is relegated to the B-roll.  Pushed into the background by Mr. Cumming but valiantly fighting through are Michelle Williams as the talentless Sally Bowles and Bill Heck as the bisexual Christopher Isherwood substitute, Cliff.  (Linda Emond and Danny Burstein, in supporting roles and both Tony-nominated, are surprisingly dull in somewhat underwritten roles.  Their cast-mate Gayle Rankin, as the vibrant Fraulein Kost, is much more entertaining but was snubbed.)  Ms. Williams’s performance deserves a column all to itself, not because, like Mr. Cumming’s, it is altogether memorable, but rather because it is unsure whether it’s great or any good at all.  Ben Brantley, in the Times, dismissed her as being subsumed by “an air of high tension,” while Hilton Als in the New Yorker argued, convincingly, that her stuttering, stumbling performance is inspired, more worthy of one of her great films.  In, actually, a spot-on analysis, Mr. Als writes in the May 5^th edition of the magazine, “she speaks in a metallic voice, like the clatter of a typewriter; the voice is a defense, a remnant of the Jazz Age, out of synch with this corroding world.”  It is her performance of the title number that most supports Mr. Als's view.  Shell-shocked and scared, it is sung (quite well) as Sally's world is falling apart, and it's clear, when Ms. Williams sings "I love a cabaret," that this is a lie.  There are, however, instances between songs that support Mr. Brantley's less optimistic prognosis.  There is no obvious answer, but it is a turn that, I dare say, will be discussed by theatrical analysts for years to come, a descent so far into the character that it is difficult to tell whether she is unready for theater or Sally is.  Besides being fascinating, though, she is generally appealing and enjoyable to watch. 

Admittedly, it is painful—and this is one of the few painful parts of an immensely pleasurable production—to imagine the gifted Emma Stone, originally tapped for the part in April of 2013, playing Sally, and to think of how effortlessly she would have knocked the role out of the park.  Oh, well.  Maybe she’ll be one of those replacements.