Cabaret is a tricky show. Kander and Ebb’s classic story of Berlin just prior to the Nazi takeover was not an instant classic: Its dark irony left many people in the 1960s uncertain how to react to the original staging.
Perhaps Cabaret was ahead of its time. In a 1998 revival Academy Award-winning film director Sam Mendes hit on a formula that clicked. The pared-down staging with slutty Kit Kat girls and a lascivious Emcee that won multiple Tony Awards is the model for Jersey Productions’ current staging. But while Cabaret at the Carnegie mimics the revival, it never captures its brash spirit.
Director Larry Smiglewski made a smart move in bringing professional performer Richard Amelius from Philadelphia for the Emcee. Tall, imposing and odd, he’s been recognized for playing the role previously. And he gets it. However, despite his electricity, he isn’t able to bring this limp production to life. In fact, Smiglewski lets Amelius do too much mugging, even when it undermines his character.
Perhaps the show’s most entertaining shtick is a post-intermission bit when Amelius coaxes a few audience members onstage to dance with him and then give him a farewell spank. The results are amusing, but they pull us away from a character who’s been played as sinister and alien. (Just before intermission he moons the audience with a swastika on his butt; he flips us off another time.) Surely we aren’t expected to like him, but that seems to be the desired effect.
If other actors performed at Amelius’ level and if Smiglewski had injected this production with more ironic starch, some of this might have been acceptable. As it is, Dain Alan Paige’s Cliff and Liz Vosmeier’s Sally Bowles feel only occasionally visible, and an older couple’s love affair (Liz Comstock and Ray Smith) brings to a halt any modest momentum the show accumulates. Combined with some tentative orchestral playing and caricatured German accents, this Cabaret makes for a long two-and-a-half hours.
Amelius also choreographed the show. While his dancers aren’t perfect, they undertake some odd and suggestive moves with enthusiasm. Too bad that spirit wasn’t more pervasive. Grade: C
CABARET continues through Sept. 16 at Covington’s Carnegie Visual + Performing Arts Center.
This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2006.
