The glamour unravels: ‘Cabaret’s’ haunting echoes of denial and hope

The stage sits gutted. Once covered in crimson curtains, it is now a relic — just the frame of a two-story set with bare archways exposing the upstage brick wall. A staircase still leads up to the structure’s balcony, now stripped of showy lights and glamor that once swallowed the set.  

“Cabaret” has a rich history and is seeing a resurgence of productions, including one locally. The University of Minnesota kicked off its run Nov. 15. And like all good cabarets, it raised more questions than it answered.  

This sentiment they hoped for. Department chair of Theater Arts and Dance Margaret Werry said all good shows leave their audience with a question.  

“It doesn’t see the world in black and white. It sees it through its complexity, and it asks really important questions about how do you live ethically,” Werry said. 

“Cabaret,” set in Weimar Germany between the world wars, is about Clifford Bradshaw, an aspiring novelist from America. He stumbles into the height of German nightlife under the impending rise of Nazism. There he meets Sally Bowles, the powerful leading lady of the Kit Kat Klub, a seedy nightclub. 

Kirsten Jolly’s set design of the club consumes the entire auditorium. Tables stained from drinks and cigarettes lay scattered around the house, each with a numbered old phone — for calling the girls, or boys, of the club. It is flashy and raunchy.  

As the audience enters the theatre, performers stretch and do skits throughout the house. Thighs are exposed under hosieries clipped to bloomers. Faces are beautifully made up with burlesque looks of the time — think Marlene Dietrich meets bold color.  

It creates a nightlife scene that is free and wild. It neglects the social realities right outside the door.  

This nightclub facade gets skillfully chipped away as the show unfolds. Layers of complex emotion are peeled back, layers created and delivered by the University’s young artists, revealing humanness, denial, love, ignorance, indifference, loneliness and hope.   

These are themes that director Kym Longhi felt drawn to. She sees them as saturating society today.  

“All the different forms of denial that they practice in this production are so familiar to me. I see them in the people around me. I see them in myself,” Longhi said. “And I wanted to offer this show as a way to ask people if they were asleep and if they needed to maybe look at their own apathy or denial.” 

With its opening just a week and a half after the presidential election, the theme of political polarization is difficult to separate from what unfolds in “Cabaret.” 

“I think in some ways, the show is evergreen, but I think that at this moment, I think everybody feels they need to pause and take stock and think about politics in in a creative way, not through the usual prisms of black and white, of right and wrong, but really to think more complexly about how we behave together as a society,” Werry said. 

This show parallels the glitz and glamor of nightlife in Germany with the imminent social and political typhoon of fascism and Nazism.  

The actors capture this nuance.

Fourth-year theatre arts student Erik Haering plays the complicated, abstract role of the Emcee. This role is the host of both the club and the show and demonstrates a keen way of weaving into every character’s storyline.

A gifted performer with brilliant voice, dancing and acting ability (including 4-inch stilettos), Haering made the audience hold out for his every word.

The University of Minnesota does a musical every three years. This is the first in recent history they paired with the School of Music sporting a pit orchestra made up entirely of students. The effect of having young artists telling the story of the young artists in “Cabaret” is communal and real. It begs the question: what future do they get for themselves and what future do they make for the world?  

Joseph Chambers’ lighting design breaks the fourth wall as often as the actors, who dance in the aisles; there is no darkness for the audience to hide within. Multiple songs illuminate the seating. pulling the audience into the show’s uncertain future. 

Audience member Juliette Cherbuliez said her response to the performance was complicated.  

“The feeling in the room was one of incredible foreboding. It brought tears to my eyes and how do you applaud phenomenal performances and gorgeous singing when also there’s a feeling that politically, it is going to be devastating?” Cherbuliez said.  

The feeling blankets the audience. As the influence of Nazism became more abrupt in the show, a certain silence and stillness set in. Pauses before applause held this tension. 

Darkly covered lips and long lashes that bat against eyelids of bright blues and reds become smeared. Tear-streaked and messy, the facade of the performers — along with their cabaret — are left tattered. 

“Cabaret” is performing through this weekend at the Rarig Center. All performances have sold out.

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