Cabaret-- a Discussion- Page 7
Cabaret-- a Discussion
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
insomniak
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/7/04
#151re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 7/29/05 at 11:33pm
4ever, great idea. I wish I'd seen the production you were involved with. Sounds scary.
I think I already asked this, but which script did you use?
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
insomniak
Broadway Legend Joined: 5/7/04
#153re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 7/29/05 at 11:48pm
What'd you alter?
Was this community theatre?
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#154re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 7/30/05 at 12:02amWe changed the ladies to two men in drag (Bobby and Victor), the Kit Kat Girls were dressed like men in the kick line, and that's about it. And it was community theatre. :)
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#155re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 7/30/05 at 2:29pm
Who's your fav Kit Kat girl?
I like Rosie, Frenchie, and Helga cause they don't get as much attention. (Lulu was one of the two ladies, Texas invited Cliff to the Klub, and Fritzie was Fraulein Kost.)
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#159re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 7/31/05 at 11:33am
Who's your fav Kit Kat Boy?
I like Bobby. :)
#160re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 7/31/05 at 7:48pm
Bobby.
For obvious reasons. ahem. 
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#162re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 7/31/05 at 8:57pmYes indeed!
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#164re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/1/05 at 1:10pmWhat's your favorite overall part of Cabaret? I like the kickline and the audience participation sequence. :)
gavrochegirl
Broadway Legend Joined: 4/16/05
#165re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/1/05 at 1:13pm
I'm going to jump in for a minute and say that my favorite part is the audience participation. 
*jumps out*
What the puck?!
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#167re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/3/05 at 5:06pm
Today I bought a cane, a bowtie, a black dress, and a bowler hat.
And I already have black pants, a garter belt, a pair of stockings, a top hat, a white shirt, and a black vest.
Emcee or Sally, I'm all set if we do another production. :)
#168re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/3/05 at 5:07pm
Alas, you're missing the suspenders! 
#169re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/3/05 at 5:13pm
Oh God - Read this review of a production in Dallas currently playing -- Hilarious.
______________________________
"Watertower Theatre's CABARET: The Wurst of Times"
by Elaine Liner, Dallas Observer
**********************************
The best moments at Cabaret, now playing at Addison's WaterTower Theatre, happen before the show. Wandering through the theater, transformed by scenic artist Michael Sullivan into a smoky subterranean speakeasy in 1930s Berlin, the boys and girls of the musical's chorus snake dreamily among the audience, stopping to drape their limbs languorously on balcony rails and the backs of chairs.
The mingling creates a sexy, leather-bar mood, with boys wearing S&M leashes and girls dressed as even sluttier versions of Britney Spears' nymphets, if that's even possible. Then the drummer hits that long roll on the snare, the cymbals crash, the show begins and the fun is over.
Two good performances by supporting actors--Gary Taggart as the sweet Jewish grocer, Herr Schultz, and Lindsey Holloway as the winsome prostitute, Fräulein Kost--aren't enough to keep this Cabaret cooking. The leads--Jennifer Green as flighty chanteuse Sally Bowles, and Clint Carter as Cliff, the bisexual American ex-pat writer she shacks up with--wear their roles like too-small shoes. Carter appears to have strolled over from Brigadoon. He's bland and expressionless, stirring up zero chemistry whether kissing Sally or a cute chorus boy. When he's not onstage, you don't miss him. When he is onstage, you have to remind yourself who he is again.
Green, a standout in WaterTower's Spitfire Grill and Company, seems all at sea trying a British accent and flicking cig ashes with green-painted nails. You can tell that beneath the war paint and bad wig, she's just not that kind of girl. Green can sing, but emotionally she gets nowhere near the Weltschmerz of "Mein Herr," "Maybe This Time" and "Cabaret," Kander and Ebb's now-familiar torch songs. For that, as if it needs mentioning, watch Liza in her Oscar-winning performance as Sally in the 1972 Bob Fosse movie.
Cabaret, now nearly 40 years old (the John Van Druten play is older, as are the Christopher Isherwood stories that inspired it all), is one of the few works of American musical theater that suffers by comparison to its subsequent movie version (lately Broadway's been doing it the other way around, turning old movies into new musicals). For film, Fosse stripped the show to its essence, changing the old Jewish grocer into gorgeous Marisa Berensen and keeping the focus on Sally. Fosse also wisely dropped the dreary subplot about Sally's landlady, Fräulein Schneider (played at WaterTower by overly fidgety Pam Dougherty), and he eliminated the Fräulein's songs with Schultz, which derail the show's momentum. Watching Cabaret onstage, you keep wondering where Sally Bowles went and why these two geezers keep singing about pineapples (the grocer brings food gifts to the landlady).
The character everyone remembers from the movie--the creepy Kit Kat Club Emcee played by Joel Grey onscreen and made even creepier by actor Alan Cumming in director Sam Mendes' 1998 Broadway revival--has no relationship with anyone else onstage and speaks only to the audience. But he's the life force of the show, the source of erotic energy. He's the messenger of impending doom as the Nazi presence grows more menacing in act two. And he's comic relief, taking vaudevillian turns in "The Money Song," "Two Ladies" and the haunting "If You Could See Her," which uses a gorilla costume to get across Hitler's attitude toward mixed marriage.
WaterTower director Terry Martin, aiming for Marlene Dietrich's androgyny in his Emcee, cast Ashley Puckett Gonzales. Ach du lieber! She's a disaster, vocally and physically. Stuffed into leather short-shorts and a black bra, Gonzales is a bleached blond bratwurst bursting out of its casing. You'd think wearing costumes this tight would facilitate the high notes, but no luck there either. Her voice is as fried as her hair, poor dear.
The set for the show is spectacular, so it's too bad that except for the dancers' revealing outfits in the opening number, costume designer Michael Robinson's duds for this Cabaret are all duds. The ladies' flouncy dresses say Banana, not Weimar, Republic. Sally comes off like a dowdy schoolmarm in sensible pumps. Where's that divine decadence, dahling?
By the time the Nazi flags drop and Sally's wailed her last wail over Elsie from Chelsea, we should have something emotionally invested in these colorful characters and the fate that awaits them under Hitler's rule. But that just doesn't happen with this production. We never quite make it out of Addison and into the Berlin of the Jazz Age. Instead of building to a terrifying roar, this Cabaret winds down to a sort of empty whimper. Um, Auf Wiedersehen, y'all.
MusicalDirector109
Leading Actor Joined: 5/16/03
#170re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/3/05 at 5:20pmWow. That's really bad!! Thanks for sharing.
#171re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/3/05 at 5:25pmThat is a brilliantly written review!
"For me, THEATRE is an anticipation, an artistic rush, an emotional banquet, a jubilant appreciation, and an exit hopeful of clearer thought and better worlds."
~ an anonymous traveler with Robert Burns
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#172re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/3/05 at 6:31pm
LOL! Oh well. And I would have gotten suspenders but I ran out of money. 
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#173re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/4/05 at 12:21pm
Ooh! And for Tomorrow Belongs to Me (first version), instead of using a record player or getting a boy in a Boy Scout uniform to sing, we had the Emcee sing it (in an uncharacteristically sweet voice), but only lit the microphone.
So all you saw was this pair of hands clutching the mic.
Then for the final 'Tomorrow belongs...' we turned the light off and the audience (and the stage) was in total darkness.
Then she hissed, "To ME!" and we lit only her face.
Scared the audience's pants off. :p
Emcee4ever
Leading Actor Joined: 7/27/05
#174re: Cabaret-- a Discussion
Posted: 8/5/05 at 2:49pmThat Dallas production sounds awful. Oh well. :)
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