For the week of January 23 - 29, 2002

Welcome to ‘Cabaret’

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By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Willkommene mien Damen und Herren. The brilliant 36-year-old musical "Cabaret" is gracing the valley boards for one week at the nexStage Theatre in Ketchum.

What luck, what joy, what daring drama.

The dancing portion of the Cabaret Cast. Courtesy Photo

As musicals go this one is on the darker side for the Laughing Stock Theater Company, who’s producing the show. But it remains a treat for the audience, for its witty songs, high energy dancing, indelible characters, and for the fact that the audience is induced to become part of the action.

The theater, itself, including the lobby, will be arranged cabaret style so that tables of the customers will be enmeshed with the action in the club scenes.

Some scenes have been staged to occur in the audience, and during the pre-play period and intermission, actors will be working the room in character and costume. So, be ready to submerge yourself in Berlin at its most decadent.

Based on Christopher Isherwood’s diaries, called "Berlin Stories," "Cabaret" was written by John Kander and Fred Ebb. It debuted on Broadway in 1966, and won many Tony Awards. Then it was made into an Oscar-winning venue for the young Liza Minnelli, as Sally Bowles, in the highly successful movie in 1972.

The play has enjoyed two revivals on Broadway, and the most recent one won yet more Tony Awards. After four years it continues to draw enthusiastic theater crowds to its current home in the old Studio 54.

Directed by veteran actress, singer and dancer, Jennifer Perry, who wowed the Wood River Valley as Aldonza in "Man of La Mancha" last fall, "Cabaret" is centered around a young American writer, Cliff, played by Dawson Howard.

He moves into a somewhat seedy boarding house, hoping to find inspiration and material for a novel. Cliff becomes involved in the lives of several people, including his landlady, played by Patty Parsons and the performers at the Kit Kat Klub. The activities at the club are typical of Berlin night life in the late 1930's, and also serve as a metaphor for the chaotic world outside, and the rise of Nazism.

Parsons also is the show’s musical director.

Notable among the cast is the Emcee, whose antics are performed endearingly with plenty of camp, by Steve Pruitt. The eccentric singer Cliff befriends is Sally Bowles played in this production by Sarah Bradshaw, who also served as an assistant choreographer under Perry.

Cliff and the other characters contend with personal problems, as well as the changing politics of the pre-Hitler Berlin.

Also in the cast are Matt Gorby, Rachel Aanestad, and Tom Crais, nine female dancers and singers known as the Kit Kat Girls, and a three men chorus.

We wanted to come up with our own version, and find our own style," said Perry, who employs choreography inspired by the famous Bob Fosse choreography from the original show and the movie. "What I like is that this, like the revival is edgier," Perry said.

But she says this version is brighter in style and in costuming than the current run in New York.

"What we’re exposing is the evil, but we’re not judging. We’re just telling the story. It’s sexy and fun and Fosse-esque."

Tickets are available for "Cabaret" at the theater on Main Street and Chapter One Bookstore, both in Ketchum. They cost $36 for seats in front row tables and $28 for seats at other tables. Tables are either seating for four or six people.

"I think the audience will be moved," Perry said.

 

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