Cabaret

Cabaret: Production History
1966 – Hal Prince Original Production
1967- National Tour
1968 – London Production (Judi Dench as Sally Bowles)
“Cabaret is often cited as one of the first major 'concept musicals', where the direction, design and
symbolism of the piece can be just as important as the plot. The images evoked of decadent Berlin and the
ways in which it bows to the rise of Nazism are powerful and disturbing, able to affect multiple generations
of theatre-goers. The piece was conceived by producer-director Hal Prince, who worked closely with
librettist Joe Masteroff, composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb to shape both the general outline and
the specific details of the show. The show opened on Broadway on 20 November, 1966, where the
opening-night cast included Joel Grey, Jill Haworth and Lotte Lenya. The production ran for 1,165
performances and won 8 Tony Awards. A subsequent London production included Judi Dench, Peter
Sallis and Barry Dennen in the cast. It opened on 28 February, 1968 and ran for 336
performances” (BBC).
1972 – Film Production (Liza Minelli as Sally Bowles)
1986 – London Revival
1998 – Mendes’s Broadway Revival (Alan Cummings as the Emcee, Natasha Richardson as Sally)
“The thrusting, angular Bob Fosse moves that are so inextricably associated with “Cabaret” lent an
atmosphere of dancing on the edge of a volcano. This time around (Mendes’s 1998 Broadway Revival), the
volcano has caused chaos even before it fully erupts; the dancers look wounded, their stockings are ripped,
and they seem eager not to entertain but simply to survive. The fact that they all have imperfect bodies (clad
in dingy underwear) makes it even harder for us to distance ourselves from their fate; they’re not that
different from us. “
-Nancy Franklin (The New Yorker)
“Mendes’ Cabaret could, I suppose, be described as a betrayal of what Prince and the show’s creators—
librettist Joe Masteroff, composer John Kander, lyricist Fred Ebb—had in mind. The original made a very
careful demarcation between the real world of the two central romantic plots and the limbo world of the
Emcee, interrupting the traditionally-styled book scenes and songs with numbers that functioned as
commentary on what surrounded them. For this reason, the original Cabaret was a show that
simultaneously looked back and ahead, one that made tantalizing shifts from the ‘40s to ‘60s mode of
conventional musicals to that of the conceptual musical that Prince would go on to champion and triumph
with in the next decade...The new Cabaret mixes the two worlds right from the beginning; the Emcee is
allowed to disturb the real world throughout, and the real characters are drawn into the stage show. “
-Ken Mandelbaum (Playbill)
“George Grosz once said of his art, “I felt the ground shaking beneath my feet, and the shaking was visible
in my work.” The same might be said of the work of Cummings and Mendes in their dazzling reinvention
of “Cabaret”—the difference is that they make it impossible for the audience not to feel that shaking, too.”
-Michiko Kakutani (The New York Times)
“Theatre is not about illustrating, not about decorating. It’s about building images from the inside out. It’s
become a cliché, you can’t act the beginning of Nazism with a knowledge of the ending. The point (of
Cabaret) is to show how seductive it was, to draw the audience in.”
-Sam Mendes (Director)
“The carnal, gyrating chorus of men and women look ill and spent, like denizens in an S-and-M bar who
have already let the games go on too long.”
-Ben Brantley (The New York Times)
1999- National Tour
2006 – London Revival
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