The Slide Into Darkness

IN THE DEBAUCHED atmosphere of the German nightclub scene before World War Two, a young American singer loses her mind and her baby. A Jew, a widow, a writer and a whore try to make sense out of their lives, but a Nazi outsmarts them all. When nothing remains but the cozy Kit Kat Club, the Master of Ceremonies tears the bandages from everyone's eyes, revealing the ugliness of their lives.

Playwright John van Druten dresses up Nazism in cabaret clothes, spotlighting the rise of the political party on the stage of a nightclub. The specter of Nazism looms over Berlin, transforming the frantic pursuit of pleasure in the cabaret from an escape into a form of participation in the new cause. As Cabaret progresses, the interspersed dance numbers lose their decadent innocence and turn into vicious political diatribes.

Van Druten's play about the Nazis' rise traces its effect on personal lives, a much more difficult task than straight historical or political narration. Alternate scenes take place in the Kit Kat Club, juxtaposing the drama with the dance numbers, which relate more or less subtly to the plot.

A little singing, a little dancing, a little hootchy-koo: these alone, some would say, make up a musical. Cabaret piles political and historical meaning on top of the basic elements, in a melange that often trips up directors. This production's director, Scott Goldsmith, however, masterfully sidesteps a problem that plagues many musicals: uneven singing, acting or dancing, by performers cast for their talent in only one area. Cabaret's strength lies in a group of multi-talented performers who never let any side of the show down, handling its weighty acting demands as skillfully as the song-and-dance numbers.

Maggi-Meg Reed can belt out a song like "Maybe This Time" with all the expression and ease of the seasoned professional she protrays. She makes a "perfectly marvelous" Sally Bowles, played by Liza Minelli in the movie version, the blithe singer who moves in with American writer Clifford Bradshaw (Travis Epes) the day he arrives in Berlin. The two commence a life of charming self-deception: he fools himself and his family into thinking he is writing a novel that never materializes; she believes in the vacuous glamour of her role as a nightclub entertainer.

The set of the club, like all the sets, is very simple, offsetting the elaborate costumes and the seven beautiful girls cast in the chorus line. In these scenes, Andrew Sellon gives an outstanding performance as the ghoulish Master of Ceremonies. Appearing in heavily rouged whiteface, the host welcomes the other characters, as well as the audience, into the club's milieu, and the brutal world of Hitler's Brownshirts.

The ghostly interpretation Sellon brings to his part, mostly mime except for his songs, helps tie the carefree world of the cabaret to the despairing lives of the characters. the frenetic chase of pleasure, which first draws people to the cabaret, slowly creeps into their lives outside it. The middle-aged widow, Fraulein Schneider (Holly Sargent), calls off her engagement to the Jewish Schultz (Joshua Milton) because of her terror of the Nazis. Sargent's singing starts off a little shakily, but she recovers quickly. The only changes that creep into the life of Fraulein Kost, deftly portrayed by Holley Stewart, are the Nazi soldiers that creep into her bed each night, replacing the inevitable sailors who once graced her bedsheets.

Frederick Freyer never misses a cue as the piano player at the Kit Kat Club. His presence on stage during the more serious scenes back at the boardinghouse is bewildering, however, especially since he also doubles as the insidious Ernst Ludwig, a Nazi goon, and often exits stage left as the pianist, only to enter immediately stage right, as Ludwig.

THE MUSICAL FAIRY TALE begins to fall apart when the prospect of parenthood forces Cliff and Sally to look more seriously at their happy-go-lucky lives. The pace of the show picks up, and in a short, confusing scene, a Nazi soldier appears on stage, sings "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," and disappears. Perhaps van Druten wishes the audience to experience the confusion the German people actually felt about what was happening around them. We already know what happened, though, and this mournful scene only puzzles a modern audience.

In a more successful scene, the chorus girls dance as dolls, while Beth Saidel performs a dance solo as a ballerina lost in a sea of mechanical people. At the end of the number they "heil Hitler"; the ballerina gives up and joins them. Although the concept of the flitting dancer seems a bit hackneyed, it clarifies the action for the audience.

The meaning of the new political force soon becomes clear to Cliff as well. He insists that Sally leave Berlin immediately and return with him to the U.S. She balks, and after a nocturnal visit to the doctor, returns no longer pregnant, and without her fur coat. In an emotion-charged scene, Epes's performance comes alive, with the fear that Sally will refuse to leave with him--he cannot even let Sally utter the words "I won't go."

In her final song, Maggi-Meg struts the famous camp just like Elsie from Chelsea:

What good is sitting alone in your room?

Come hear the music play!

Come to the cabaret, old friend,

Life is a cabaret.

Those lyrics have entered the popular imagination as a paean to the decadent life. Cabaret shows not just the free-and-easy side, but the slide into darkness that goes along with it. The Leverett House production doesn't neglect one side for the other.