Op-Ed: Mason Pilevsky, 26 April 2024

I am disappointed in the way New York City’s Broadway theatre critics evaluated Cabaret at the August Wilson Theatre. (Check out the Pages on Stages review of Cabaret). In reading other reviews, I felt that the critics went into the show with a checklist of what Cabaret usually looks like and were evaluating the production’s worth and merit based on its similarity to previous productions, with zero regard for the production itself. While the revival is far from perfect, and the preshow experience is, admittedly, a huge waste of time and money, the innovative take on this widely-produced favorite was one of a kind. I sat in the theater listening to words I had memorized, but hearing them as though for the first time.

In particular, the reinterpretation of the character of the Emcee got a lot of undeserved flack. The show started out at a level of ridiculousness that made it seem like the production was going to be completely incoherent. However, Eddie Redmayne got less and less absurd in every scene until by the end he was in the same clothing as everyone else, completely and utterly indistinguishable from the rest of the cast. He seemed normal. Human. This mirrored Hitler’s rise to power. At first, the idea that Hitler could become fuehrer was ludicrous and absurd to German citizens. Many didn’t bother fearing him. Yet Nazism became so normalized that you couldn’t tell a Nazi from a German (unless, of course, they were marked for execution). With so much of the country in uniform, Germany became one nation under Hitler. While the flamboyant beginning of Cabaret seemed concerning, and I did admittedly worry where it was going, by the end of the night the production was completely coherent to me. The final moment, with all of the actors in the same clothes having normalized the Emcee’s bizarre assertion that “there are no troubles here”, cleared up every question I had while watching the earlier parts of the production from the dolls on the rotating turntable to the complete and utter chaos of the opening scene.

Gayle Rankin also brought a very different very unique Sally Bowles. A character meant as commentary on innocence and ignorance, she provided a clear foil for Eddie Redmayne’s Emcee. Rather than showing ignorance as cute, fragile, and unconcerned, Gayle Rankin’s Sally Bowles embodied a powerful, angry ignorance that showcased how loudly people can scream in a vacuum without full comprehension of the world around them, and how dangerous this power is to gain, to hold, and to lose.

This interpretation brought life to a story about losing life, and I think that it ought not be compared column-by-column to other interpretations, because it is using the same words to tell a different story. I sincerely wish that the New York theater community had committed to critiquing the production that they saw and not the production that they expected to see based on the title of the show. I am profoundly disappointed that that we are unable and unwilling to look at old ideas with fresh eyes, especially in a time of unprecedented political chaos and civil unrest surrounding antisemitism here in New York City.

The public still puts some stock into the general tenor of reviews when choosing a Broadway show. In today’s world, this interpretation of Cabaret is a show that people need to see. Purists who believe a show should be frozen as it was on its very first opening night and replicated rather than reimagined in each new context are abusing their power as liasons between the theatre community and the general public. I applaud Cabaret’s astounding new take on other ways that these words and actions could be seen and understood.