7 august - The Reykjavik Grapevine

Cabaret at the Icelandic Opera
The famous musical comes to life with all
necessary glamour and decay. Based on the
Berlin tales of Christopher Isherwood it tells
a story of an American writer who arrives in
Berlin in 1932 and gets caught up in a love
affair and the political changes in Germany.
The writer (Felix Bergsson) finds himself
falling in love with the party girl and night
club-singer Sally Bowles (Þórunn Lárusdóttir),
and parallel to their struggle is the story of
an elderly couple, the Jewish Herr Schultz
(Borgar Garðarsson ) and the independent
Fraulein Schneider (Edda Þórarinsdóttir). And
of course the notorious Kit-Kat club and its
gender-bending party-crowd is present as well
with the MC (Magnús Jónsson) in charge,
they sing and dance and set the background
of the musical. Of course, all this offers a lot
of drama, emotionally bursting into cabaret
singing, crying, laughing and basic fun. The
music is classic as is the production in general;
director Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir walks down a
familiar path with her emphasis in this project.
Some extreme situations are a bit melodramatic
but that is something you can always expect in
musical theatre.
However the first open rehearsal of the
musical lacked a lot of energy. The famous
Cabaret songs, especially those performed
by Þórunn Lárusdóttir, were great; she is a
talented singer and gave a great performance,
but she could not hold up the whole show
by herself. The other actors seemed to be
saving themselves, in the songs you could see
the potentials of their performance but the
tempo was too slow. The elderly couple really
slowed things down and their relationship – a
romantic one in a highly dramatic situation-
didn’t capture my attention as acted. The
control-freakish MC seemed to be haunted by
Tourette’s syndrome but was much more fun
after the break when his devilish side was more
visible. The five singing/dancing/provoking
girls were charming in an odd way.
One must hope that the artists will surely
boost up their performance before the premier.
By Kristrún Hauksdóttir
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