The musical Cabaret has a superlative pedigree. It first opened on Broadway in 1966 and had a healthy run. Then was made into a hit film, starring Liza Minnelli. It has been revived a number of times, including a 1998 version (starring Alan Cumming as the Emcee) that won a Tony Award for Best Revival. With all these plaudits and resources to draw from, why does the Skylight Opera Theater version seem so muddled? One starts to wonder about the show even before the opening number. The onstage Kit Kat Klub band is perched on a platform so high that those sitting in the orchestra can only see a few heads sticking up. Worse is a permanently attached spiral staircase leading to the platform. This means actors must dodge the platform's overhang and staircase during all of the production numbers. This is extremely distracting, and it also puts far too much visual emphasis on the staircase.
The sets themselves are a confusing mishmash of portable screens that don't suggest much of anything. For instance, take the squalid room shared by the two main characters. Several comments are made about the room's shabbiness, yet one does not see stained wallpaper or cracks in the plaster. Theater cannot exist in a vacuum, and these oversights make the audience work far too hard in imagining Berlin in the late 1920s. Not only does one require a sense of place, there also needs to be a sense of decadence and impending doom. This is especially true in the Kit Kat Club. Yet neither the club's furniture nor the chorus girls' outfits look the least bit shabby. Both the girls and their outfits look squeaky clean, as if they had stepped out of a Victoria's Secret catalogue. There's neither a bruise nor a torn stocking to be seen, despite the fact these "girls" are likely to be drug-addicted prostitutes. And where is the glazed look in their eyes? However, the girls (and a handful of boy dancers) do move well. The top-notch choreography is one of the show's strengths.
As the Emcee, multi-talented David Colbert strongly suggests Joel Grey, who starred as the show's "original" Emcee. Colbert appears at first in a tuxedo, complete with white makeup, rouge and lipstick that accent his handsome, chiseled features. Not only does he sing well, he can do an impressive chorus-line kick. However hard he tries, though, he cannot overcome the poor directorial choices that make this a sanitized, and not very satisfying, show.
Other actors appear equally lost in time and space. One cannot fault Molly Rhode for her portrayal of the manipulating English chanteuse, Sally Bowles. Rhode comes across as far too wholesome, and she lacks any essence of sex appeal. One can easily imagine her as a "Thoroughly Modern Millie." Rhode sings well, but she seems more comfortable backed up by a chorus ("Don't Tell Mama") than doing a stand-alone number ("Cabaret"). Another problem is the lack of chemistry between Sally and her boyfriend Cliff, an American writer who has recently arrived in Berlin. Given the lack of sparks between them, it is almost impossible to believe that Cliff (Jonathan Wainwright) could be the father of Sally's child. One's attention shifts to the better-realized romance between a much older couple, Fraulein Schneider (Leslie Fitzwater) and Herr Schultz (Drew Brhel). A sweet naturalness exists between the two actors. Both have fine voices, and Fitzwater shows hers to good advantage in "So What," "It Couldn't Please Me More" and "Married." Brhel excels in his series of awkward romantic moves. However, these few moments of pleasure do not add up to a satisfying evening. If one expects another showstopper along the lines of Skylight's Chicago, one is likely to leave disappointed.
