Willkommen, bientot and welcome to the Kit Kat Klub, sings a paint-faced emcee who chisels away at the fourth wall whilst you are guided to your table by a member of the chorus line. Or, at least if you’ve paid the extra cost. If not, you still get to see the show, but you’re sat up in the normal seats. And you don’t get wine. And as we all know, there are two ways to a reviewer’s heart: a brilliant production, and free wine. Unfortunately, for those of us in the ordinary seats, neither of these were present.
I must qualify that last statement, however. Not the bit about the wine: that just wasn’t there. When I say a brilliant production, I mean the totality of it. Not just the lead singers, or the set design, or any of the other little bits that could go well or badly in isolation, but all of these things together. Unfortunately for the production here, these bits just didn’t fit together. This was perhaps most noticeable in the discrepancy between the music and the choreography. Whilst due credit must be given to Illias Thoms as the director of music for leading a band which was, whilst small, quite spectacular at times, the choreography simply didn’t match. Most notably the chorus line was quite often, and quite significantly off-time, and the dancers were of a very variable quality. This, perhaps, would matter less had the band played a little looser. It was the gulf between the two, between the music and the choreography that helped to let the production down, in this case. Perhaps, however, I’ve misread it. Perhaps the dancing was meant to be off-time. After all, Cabaret is a show about the Kit Kat Klub, a sleazy cabaret in 1930s Berlin, not about the Berlin State Ballet.
This spottiness applies also to the acting. Certainly, there were some outstanding performances, including Alice Pearse as a pitch-perfect Sally, capable of sounding at the same time wounded, vulnerable and extremely angry. However, she far outshone Cliff (Jack Graham), her lover, in the few duets that they had. A character who exists as living proof of a concept taken too far is the emcee, Mark Dlugash. As a caricature of grotesquely absurd sexuality, his character certainly looks the part, displaying no emotion through his aggressively painted face, wearing fishnet gloves and a waistcoat without a shirt. However, a bizarre accent, a combination of French and German, is far from easy to understand and becomes tiresome quickly. A shame, considering he portrays a character who is quite fascinating.
Whilst the play got off to a slow start, the second act was the more interesting act by far, and was by far the better acted. Ultimately, whilst it did deliver moments of excellence, the production as a whole did not work as a cohesive whole, and so failed to deliver its promised punch.
3 stars
