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Entertainment

Delightful decadence

Music and menace, sex and violence mingle compellingly in Cabaret, beginning next week.

By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN
Published December 30, 2005

Two years ago, the Show Palace Dinner Theatre broke all attendance records with its production of John Kander and Fred Ebb's razzle-dazzle send-up of American hucksters, Chicago.

Both musicals show a rotting and rotten society, where the gullible masses are manipulated by their emotions and individuals are betrayed by those they trust.

Though neither sounds particularly jolly, both are totally fascinating and can give a thoroughly enjoyable night of theater, depending on the casting, direction and staging (which Chicago delivered in spades).

Director Matthew McGee has his work cut out for him in Cabaret. The shows he has directed at the Show Palace so far have been comedies: Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Sugar Babies, Nunsense Jamboree, Anything Goes and the like. Cabaret has its humorous spots, but it has serious dramatic elements, too, which makes it appeal all the more to genuine theater lovers and presents a challenge for the director.

The show won eight Tony Awards when it debuted on Broadway in 1966 and five Oscars when it was made into a film starring Liza Minnelli in 1972. A slightly reworked 1993 revival won an additional four Tonys.

Cabaret opens, appropriately, at the cabaret, where a mocking Master of Ceremonies (Chris Layton, Annie, Best Little Whorehouse at Naples Dinner Theatre) welcomes the crowd, Willkommen, and introduces the darling of the place, Sally Bowles (Laura Lynne Tapper, Grace in Annie, Hodel in Fiddler on the Roof), an American expatriate who is out for a good time, never mind the consequences.

Sally meets an earnest young American writer with writer's block, Clifford Bradshaw (Michael Lundy, No Sex Please, We're British), who agrees to let Sally share his room, under the slightly disapproving, but pragmatic, eye of the landlady, Fraulein Schneider (Susan Haldeman, mother in A New York Christmas).

The fraulein has her own romance going with a Jewish fruit seller, Herr Schultz (Paul Andrews, Alfred Doolittle in My Fair Lady), who adores her and pretends not to see the raucous sailors who "visit" her female boarders.

The show's atmosphere is pervasively hedonistic, reflecting the fatalistic attitude of a Germany approaching an all-out war of aggression on its neighbors. Outside of the Nazi symbols and gestures, though, the musical doesn't go into the politics of the situation; instead, it shows the effect that politics has on the little world of the cabaret and the fraulein and her boarders.

The Kander and Ebb songs capture those moments, as when saucy Sally sings Don't Tell Mama, the caustic emcee makes light of sex in Two Ladies, a conflicted Fraulein Schneider realizes the political ramifications of her romance with a Jew in What Would You Do? and everybody celebrates worldly goods in The Money Song.

The Show Palace producers have opted to eliminate much of the coarse language in the original script, but because of the mature themes and situations, the show is not recommended for children.

WHAT: Cabaret, a musical

WHERE: Show Palace Dinner Theatre, 16128 U.S. 19, Hudson.

WHEN: Jan. 6-Feb. 26. Shows are at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; 1:30 p.m. some Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; and 3 p.m. Sundays. Doors open two hours before each show for full cash bar and included buffet.

TICKETS: Dinner and show, $41; show only, $29.95, plus tax and tip. The show has mature themes and is not recommended for children. Call 863-7949 in west Pasco; toll free elsewhere at 1-888-655-7469.

[Last modified December 30, 2005, 00:57:15]