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please let me blow the smoke  into your open mouth  here in the light

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"Welcome to the Theatre": Diary of a Broadway Baby

Cabaret

April 24, 2024 | Broadway | August Wilson Theatre | Evening | Musical | Original | 2H 45M + 1H preshow

I am kicking my feet and twirling my feet as I lovingly, tenderly, reverently carve Bebe Neuwirth's name into the Tony personally.

Bebe Neuwirth Verdict: My Soul Transcended Space and Time

A Note on Ratings

Oh. The rest of the show. Right.

Cabaret is one of the greatest pieces of musical theatre to exist. I have seen four productions of this show on multiple "levels" of production (Broadway, community, regional, etc.) The show being what it is, it seems inconceivable to ever stage a poor production of a show with such rich material. Even if the talent pool came from a small town, the music, the lyrics, the story would be so strong, so moving, so timeless, that nothing coupled possibly ruin it.

I was wrong.

The fifth Broadway revival of this beloved Kander and Ebb musical is a stagnant spectacle whose price tag seems to actively encourage its potential audience to pick up their knitting, their book, and their broom, because the holiday of the Kit Kat Club is only meant for the rich denizens of society. Helmed by a director with no prior experience in musical theatre, the show fundamentally mistrusts its audience's intelligence and the once-masterful subtext is now about as subtle as a brick through a fruit shop window.

It's a bad sign when the security staffer at the entrance line tells you the design is excellent, the visuals are excellent, "the show is...good," with pointed hesitation and eyebrow raising. What would we do without New York honesty?

Under this new "immersive" direction, patrons enter through a seedy back alley door (with too many steps, which granted, they did warn me about before and I should have listened) and into a massive three-story club design with pre-show entertainment and drinks galore. With limited seating and rather underwhelming acts, my disabled ass went to my seat in the theatre instead where the whole auditorium has been gutted and renovated to create a theatre-in-the-round setup that ultimately does not suit the staging. Instead, actors play primarily to the "east" side, leaving the "west" to see a lot of backs throughout.

As characters, the Emcee and Sally are deranged, clownish, and utterly devoid of layers and complexity. They are exactly what their outlandish costumes, garish makeup, and overwrought performances say they are: too much. Eddie Redmayne is going for some kind of demonic muppet clown portrayal. This interpretation fails to do what the character is meant to do. Seduce, entice, enchant, all of which can be done in a morbid or even unsettling way, but Redmayne only ever irritates and repels. Similarly, Sally is an easy character to misunderstand. She's seemingly vapid, ignorant, and concerned with nothing more than having a good time. She's a character on the verge, but only ever on the verge. Too often I have seen performers act out the titular song as a full-blown breakdown. It is not. It is a triumph. It is a discordant celebration as the rest of the show falls into despair. In directing all of Sally's numbers to be as hysterical, unhinged, and off-putting as they are, it's clear the director, the producers, and to an extent, the actress who went along with it, do not understand this character, this story, this world. Less is more. Trust the material. Trust the audience.

Cabaret is a racy show with plenty of lewd and lascivious content. But this production takes the graphic nature to an extreme that ultimately misses the mark. Instead of a seductive coaxing, or even a morbid eroticism, we're granted such overt choreography (a man jerks off a giant black phallus into a woman's mouth, a woman mimes raining her tit milk all over a man's face, a woman graphically masturbates to Mein Kampf) that it becomes a juvenile display. Like children who make sexual jokes to be edgy, but only ever sound immature. It's off-putting, it's annoying, it's dull. There are multiple rewrites to the "Willkommen" introduction schtick, and the new lines are such a downgrade.

There are moments of relief amidst the spectacle that somehow still lacks spectacle. Bebe Neuwirth is a wonder of wonders, and her chemistry with Steven Skybell as Herr Schultz is a miracle of miracles. They are the saving grace of this monstrosity. Age, experience, and deep connection to the writers and the show give their performances a joyous, heartbreaking, beautiful tone. They are real, they are grounded, and they will shatter your heart. These scenes are the only places the director shows she's capable, perhaps because she has only ever done dramatic straight plays. The decision to stage "Married" as a trio with Kost spot-lit and singing in tandem was simple and brilliant and poignant. The way this show is meant to be. "What Would You Do?" is staged perhaps a little oddly, given the director's inability to remember she's doing an in-the-round show, but Bebe's rendition is the best I've ever experienced. I have heard this song sung beautiful by stronger singers, many who still grasp the acting well, but none hold a candle to her. This is a woman who has torn out her own beating heart from her chest as she chooses safety and self-preservation, even if it breaks her. This is a woman who is old and tired and not brave. Who has been given this one moment of happiness in her life and she has no choice but to saw it off like a gangrened limb before it poisons her entire body. Schultz and Schneider are the heart of this show. They deserve better.

It's been said by others, but the issues with this production seems to stem from its creative team's fundamental misunderstanding of Jewish culture. The show was written by three Jewish men who understood what was at stake. They had all lived through WWII. This is a production with a distinctly English tone, directed by gentiles, for gentiles. Broadway and New York, more familiar with Judaism than perhaps the West End, clearly received this revival differently.

Final Verdict: A Long Slog to Curtains

A Note on Ratings

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Zero Mostel & cast, Fiddler on the Roof, 1964 (Broadway)

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April 22, 2004: Assassins opens at Studio 54.

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"Welcome to the Theatre": Diary of a Broadway Baby

Stereophonic

April 20, 2024 | Broadway | Golden Theatre | Evening | Play | Original | 3H 5M

With the season what it is so far, Stereophonic is a tall drink of water after a week in a desert. After the 3 hours I spent at Patriots, it was shaping up to be a long day. But this was what I needed to end the night. It's a show that makes you believe in good theatre again. The three-plus hour runtime (including intermission) never feels like a drag. Instead, this seven-actor cast is nothing short of transcendent as they bring the story of a rock & roll band recording an album to life, with all the emotional upheaval that environment entails. Each character is given a well-rounded personality, sometimes grating, sometimes infuriating, something wonderful, and nearly all go through a fleshed-out arc that feels real and raw. This isn't a show with something bigger to say about the world or politics or issues, and yet it speaks to intra and interpersonal conflict right to its core. Nothing happens. Everything happens. Told over the span of several years, all from within a recording studio, we're asked to step into the intimate environment of a recording booth and a band that is hanging by a thread and creating music gold.

I adore a long play. I'd sit for The Ferryman (3.5 hours) and both parts of Angels in America (~8ish hours) in one sitting if I could. But too many long plays in recent years have been a drag from start to finish. Stereophonic is well-paced, gorgeously crafted, constantly enthralling. I don't care about the 70s or that genre of music or Fleetwood Mac, the closest real-life comparison to the fictional band depicted here. But I care deeply about this story. And the score, oh my god, the score. This is not a musical. It's a straight "play with music," and it is the best damn score on Broadway right now (not that that's saying much...) I'd give it the Tony right now and just save us all some time.

The costumes need to be in my wardrobe right now. The set is excellent, if perhaps not fully thought-out for the people in the rear mezzanine who aren't able to see the studio due to the rake in the theatre. The sound design is finally something worth raving about. And the women are so well-written. The relationship they shared was one of my favorite parts of the play. Unlike most stories, they got to be deeply supportive of each other. They got to love and laugh and never once devolved into catty jealousy over men or fame or talent.

It just got extended to mid-August, and I need to go back after award season is over. What I want most of all is to sit cross-legged in the corner of that stage and just live in this play for an afternoon.

Verdict: You Can Pry This Show Out of My Cold Dead Hands

A Note on Ratings

Visual representation of me outside the theatre after this show: (this is for about two of you)

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… 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐫𝐦𝐬

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞

Finally saw Hadestown a month ago and I’m definitely gonna see it again when I visit London.

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THE NOTEBOOK - CAST RECORDING [2/2]

Act 2

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The 2023/2024 Tony Awards Race

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New video by CBS News New York on Opening night on Broadway!!

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Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell in Cabaret on Broadway, 2024

Exclusive First Look at Cabaret at the KitKatClub in NYC.

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My gifs from new trailer of Cabaret!!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club (@kitkatclubnyc)

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"The Tony and Emmy-winning actress, who stars as Fraulein Schneider in the new revival of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, shares why Broadway was needed during the COVID-19 pandemic and how community is our guiding light." - Elle Magazine, April 20th, 2024

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favourite theatre couples: nigel bottom & portia something rotten!

⤷  does that make us star-crossed? 

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Well, that is the ♪ stupidest thing that I have ever heard!

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First look at Rachel in "Mary Jane"

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The cast of the Great Gatsby on Broadway