Life Is Still a ‘Cabaret’

The musical Cabaret is set in Berlin in 1929-1930 in the waning years of the Weimar Republic. It is the story of Sally Bowles, a free-spirited singer yearning for fame, and the other performers and patrons of the risqué Kit Kat Klub. Anything goes inside the club, in part because the Weimar government, an experiment in democracy following the fall of the kaiser, has embedded individual freedoms and equality in the German constitution. 

But a dark shadow looms over the fun and frolic. Through propaganda and misinformation, a promise of relief from economic hardships, and a scapegoating of minorities, the Nazi Party is gaining popular support and poised to take control of the nation. 

“Whenever I’ve thought about Hitler’s rise to power, I wondered how that could have happened,” said Professor of Theatre Barbara Wallace Grossman. The recent rise of authoritarian-leaning rulers around the world has given her an answer. “Now I understand how a democracy can slide down this treacherous and precarious slope.”

The Kit Kat Klub performers. Cabaret clubs were widespread in Berlin in the late 1920s and often served as havens for people of all gender identities and sexual orientations.

Nearly 60 years after Cabaret was first performed, Grossman is directing the musical at Tufts; the sold-out production previewed on February 27 and concludes its six-show run on March 9. She felt that now was the perfect time to heed the play’s warnings about divisiveness, bigotry, and complacency. She draws on history to recreate the excess and horror of Berlin on the brink, with the hope that the past won’t repeat itself.

Grossman has long loved Cabaret, which, while terrifying in its foreshadowing of the Holocaust, is also sexy, clever, and funny. She’s seen many incarnations, from the pre-Broadway tryout in Boston in October 1966 to the production currently on Broadway. 

She has also seen many interpretations of the Emcee—the bawdy, arch host of the Kit Kat Klub. When envisioning the character for Tufts, Grossman considered the brilliant performance of Alan Cumming in the 1998 Broadway revival, where he often seemed to be a puppet master pulling strings of conflict. With all due respect to that production’s co-directors Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall, “I just didn’t buy it,” Grossman said.

Instead, she turned to history. “Cabaret as a genre, as an art form, was huge in Berlin,” she said, with venues all over the city. “Much of the work was satirical. And many of the emcees were Jewish.”

And so, when the Emcee in this production implores his guests to “Leave your troubles outside!,” he has already ushered troubles in through the stage door. The revue he presents is only one step removed from reality, with a comical ballad that has antisemitism as its chilling punchline and a kickline that transforms into a military goosestep. “What’s going on in the club reflects what’s happening outside, and darkens as the world outside gets darker,” Grossman said.

For performers in 1930, it was risky work. “Sure enough, when Hitler came to power, he went right after the satirists who had mocked him,” Grossman said. One need only look at today’s headlines, she added, to know that autocrats will seek retribution from anyone involved in persecuting or prosecuting them.

Bella Juhaeri, A26, as Sally Bowles. Director Barbara Grossman describes Sally as charming, impossible, and oblivious to the growing dangers around her.

Clubs like the Kit Kat were shut down, and not just because of the lampooners. Berlin’s cabarets were known as havens for people of all gender identities and sexual orientations, where cross-dressing and dancing with same-sex partners were common. In this production, the gender fluidity of the characters reflects the cultural freedoms that democracy allowed.

Those freedoms were short-lived. “The Nazis went after homosexuals with a vengeance,” Grossman said. “Lesbians not nearly as much unless they were Jewish or politically subversive, but homosexual men were persecuted.”

In late 1932, a dozen clubs identified as “homosexual dance pleasures” were closed. The original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party even seized the famous Eldorado nightclub in Berlin, a mecca for the city’s gay and transgender communities, for its headquarters shortly after Hitler became chancellor in 1933.

Without giving anything away, Grossman hints that the show reflects modern-day concerns. The cast and production team “are very excited to be making it their own, to be making it relevant to our contemporary reality,” she said, “which is what musical theater at its best does.”

Quoting Sally Bowles in the song “Cabaret,” Grossman insists she is not “some prophet of doom” but does want to shake audiences out of complacency, which this musical has sought to do from the first. Blithe disregard is central to Sally, whom Grossman describes as charming, impossible, and oblivious to the growing dangers around her. 

Nalani Payson, A25, as Fräulein Kost and Zach Sabatini, A27, as Ernst Ludwig sing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me,” a folk song that morphs into a military anthem.

“She views the world through the lens of Sally,” Grossman says. “I’m sure everybody knows somebody who never reads a newspaper, really doesn’t focus on the news, is just very caught up in their own little bubble. Her bubble happens to be the Kit Kat Klub and her fierce drive to become famous.”

Grossman quotes a moment toward the end of the show when Sally’s lover, novelist Cliff Bradshaw, tells her to open her eyes to the violence and disregard for human rights happening outside the club.

“You mean politics?” Sally replies. “But what has that to do with us?”