I pretty much said everything I have to say about the Sam
Mendes revival production of Cabaret here,
when it debuted in 1998; I like it now as much as I did then, nothing of conceptual or staging consequence has changed, and really the
only new observations have to do with the current cast. So if you want the
fuller review, click on the link. If all you need is my take on the new actors
amnd the returning star, here it is, short and sweet:
Alan
Cumming as the emcee seems to have stepped out of a time
capsule, showing none of the intervening 15 years in his portrayal of the
Master of Ceremonies. He’s just as naughty, just as unsettling, just as
charming, just as subsersive, just as dangerous.
Michelle
Williams strikes me as perfectly all right as Sally Bowles, she
hits all the marks and delivers the goods like a solid pro, there’s nothing to
complain about; but at the same time, I don’t get the sense of the role having
been imprinted with her DNA in any unique way, and thought she was painting
from a palate of limited colors.
Bill
Heck was a disappointment as Cliff Bradshaw for me because, with the
character being very nearly a cipher, you at least want his sexual ambiguities
and creative ambition to be intriguing enough colors to fill him out. Casting
him as a tall, pretty, badboy leading man gives him an uncomfortable mean
streak, which doesn’t quite balance with the character’s initial political
naivete and sense of wonder at the magnificent and crumbling world around him.
On
the other hand, Linda Emond and Danny Burstein as Frau
Schneider and Herr Schultz, the older couple pursuing a doomed romance, simnply
knock it out of the park withj subtlety, ease, humanity and the illusion of
effortless control. Each personifies what being a great old pro is about.
As
Cliff’s shady German friend and student (English lessons), Aaron Krohn is the
soul of opportunistic obsequiousness; and Gayle Rankin as the
sleazy-sexy prostitute Fraulein Kost is engagingly…well, sleazy-sexy, as
delivered through the soil-sheeted perspective of a weary predator.
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