What I liked

This play was good. I had so much fun watching the first act. I love a slutty little dance number. Jo Lampert as Emcee was spectacular. The costumes were lovely (although I am biased because I know the people who did them). The lighting knocked my socks off. The band center stage was bopping. The theater itself was perfectly fit to the staging. The set was so cool with the upstairs train car/dressing room set. The spinny thing that helped aid in scene changes while still letting you see backstage was fun.

And it's an important moment to show this play. I know why they picked this now. When I live my day-to-day life I feel like the music is showing down at the end of the Wiemar years. And the Guthrie is the perfect place to show it. The general audience at the Guthrie are the same people implied to be the audience at the cabaret. Politically un-involved, even if they believe themselves to be involved. Status quo supporters. In a word: Liberals. I am glad they chose this play for this audience. On the flip side, It's just also clear the play was written in 1967.

the source material problem

It is just too easy to walk away from this show thinking, "those hedonistic gays should have done something to prevent fascism instead of distracting everyone from the threat. They should have been more tame to prevent the Nazi's reactionary force." Even with the way the chorus is built, you could leave thinking those gay hedonists BECAME Nazis. And. They didn't.

I've read a lot on Wiemar Germany. I think it sounds very cool and fun and it's very interesting how so much freedom could be destroyed so fast. And the queers were in the street fighting Nazis when more center political forces were quibbling about debate and order. And in our modern iteration of fascism, I think we're seeing that again. The people I see doing actual work to mitigate the harms of the current regime are already marginalized. Sure, we party too, but that isn't for the straight eye, it's for us. Straight people happen to benefit, but it's FOR us.

I'm also confused why the only person who could see what was happening soberly was the American. I think just because he is supposed to be the audience stand-in and we can see it. But modern events have proven that Americans can NOT soberly assess fascism, and Americans at the time were pretty mixed on whether the Nazi movement was a good idea or not.

Monday morning quarterbacking the directorial choices

Again. I think the age of the source material is the problem. But there's ways to show queer activism in the visuals that could compliment the text. Instead of people upstairs doing coke and fucking, they could be doing activism. Protest, letter writing, organizing, IDK exactly. I'm not actually a director and I'm not sure how to depict mass movement-making with such a finite number of people and space.

There is also a matter of ambiguous timing that could have been made the decent more interesting. The whole of Act 1 takes place in January 1930. Act 2 ends with people being carted off to concentration camps, which didn't start until 1933. Hitler wasn't even chancellor until 1933. So what of those 3+ years? How did that time pass over the course of Act 2? I think being a bit more clear could have given some clarity to the changes in character's opinions and to the changes in the cabaret.

I also think queering the main couple could be interesting. It's pretty ambiguous whether Sally Bowles and that weird American that looks like a Kennedy are supposed to be actually romantically interested or a Gay and Lesbian linking up for safety. They had no chemistry, and the American's gay love interest never came back. I know that the original source material was a real life gay American who helped a Lesbian get an abortion by pretending to be her husband. That is really interesting and I would love to explore that. Unfortunately the source material chains us to a relationship ambiguity at best and outright anti-choice machismo at worst. Not sure how to fix that except make them both a little more gay outside of the dialogue.

on target audiences

The reality is: this play isn't for me. Like, I am literally not the target audience. I go to the IRL modern cabaret, and am actively fighting fascism. This show is meant to make you sit back and enjoy until you realize that you are sitting back and enjoying a decent into fascism. Its meant to make you feel complicit. And it's just a bit 101 for people who are actively fighting fascism.

The characters in focus are normies enjoying the cabaret. They're straights enjoying queer culture without being in solidarity with their struggle. As is the target audience.

I found myself wondering about Emcee's private life. But they don't even get a name. Think about that. The lead character, the representation of queerness (in this version at least), the leader of the titular cabaret, doesn't have a name. We don't see anything about them but what they show the audience of the Kit Kat Club.

But, how could you make a play for me without isolating people with money? This play uses queerness to explore universal themes of love and loss and societal upheaval. And it needs to use straight people in the emotional leads so that the audience with the most power can relate. And that's tough.

Anyway. Go see it. It’s only on for another week and Jo Lampert is transcendentally good. Or meet me at the modern equivalent of the Kit Kat Club: Every queer punk show and underground gender-bent drag night. And fight fascism.