Excellent; it worked its powerful magic again. But seeing this production made me realise something about the whole piece that had not struck me before and that I think it is that it is centrally about individuals trying to make a connection with other people - Clifford with himself and perhaps others, Sally with anyone, Frau Schneider and the Professor, another person to make their half selves complete and whole - .
I did wonder if the wide and large stage would ‘work’ for something that is essentially, pretty intimate, but it did. The flexible set worked very well in creating the different environments and certainly at the end, the very precise lighting worked very well in suggesting the dark and threatening, Nazi-infested streets of the city as Hitler rose to the top. The set also managed to successfully suggest the parallels between the world of the boarding house and the world of the cabaret - two sides of the same coin? The scene with Sally and Clifford getting thrills by standing underneath the railway line was very impressively done, not least because of the first-rate sound quality - so good that often, certainly while musical numbers were being performed, one could forget that everything was miked.
Zoltan Seress was very fine as the MC - what a GIFT of a part - and was perverse enough to be interesting but not so much so that it became ridiculous. His role as a puppet master came across well, helped by the costume. The ‘Money, Money’ number was superbly done - as good as I’ve ever seen it and that includes the film - really mocking and effective choreography - and this last feature was a highlight of the production as it was edgily effective but did not just come across like Bob Fosse-lite which it all too easily can. As should be the case, although the performances of the girls were good, they were clearly, at the same time, not top theatrical performers -and this balance is one of the trickiest things to bring over, p-particularly in the role of Sally B who is meant to be a bad Cabaret performer but, thanks to Minelli, that is very rarely shown and, as indicated before, it is very difficult to give a performance that does justice to the music and character but also suggest that the performer is not actually very good.
In Part 2 the gradual encroachment of the Nazis was very well suggested without being heavy-handed as it is easy t the highlight, perhaos of the whole performance, was the performance of Cabaret by either Csenge Szilagyi or Eniko Dobo - the programme did not indicate who sung which performance which was an agonised howl of rage and despair - stunning and it recalled, in its different approach, performances of the final number of Gypsy, ‘Rose’s Turn’ which, when played in that way, become far more powerful than if it is just taken as a song of triumph -it’s actually a song of despair, I think.
So, a super, if very late evening - the start was delayed by 40 or so minutes due to rain.