A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle
A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle
A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle#1
Posted: 4/8/08 at 4:40pm
THis is a wonderful, bold production. Here' smy full review.
http://broadway2seattle.blogspot.com/2008/04/seattle-theatre-review-life-is-cabaret.html
re: A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle#2
Posted: 4/8/08 at 4:43pm
Thanks Bobby !
and for the videos you posted.. I love the S&M Mein Herr. I wish I live in Seattle sometimes..Mame & Cabaret..wow!
J*
re: A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle#2
Posted: 4/8/08 at 4:50pm
No problem Jay! It has been a wonderful year for theatre in Seattle. Theatre is pretty hit or miss hear but this year has given me great hope. Mame was fantstic (scroll down on my page to see full review) with Dee Hoty making the role hers. The only sad thing is she wasn't anywhere on the posters/marquee for the show. I know she's not a household name, but c'mon it's freaking Dee Hoty!
I'm a bit behind on my review but I also saw great productions of Doubt and Anne Frank that were quite wonderful.
re: A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle#3
Posted: 4/8/08 at 7:00pmDont forget to see "Ragtime" at The Moore.
re: A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle#4
Posted: 4/8/08 at 8:05pmI'll try to keep an open mind about Cabaret (which I am seeing in just a couple of hours), but my mind is pretty set in it's ways about how Cabaret is, and the vision of this staging seems to not be it, but I do like to see different interpretations. I'm trying to not read your review until afterwards though, in case there are any spoilers!
re: A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle#5
Posted: 4/8/08 at 9:21pm
Ragtime at the Moore? What!
Choitoy. No real spoilers really. A few but nothing big. It's a great production, very inventive and daring unlike any Cabaret I've seen. Let us know what you think!
re: A Wonderful Cabaret in Seattle#6
Posted: 4/9/08 at 4:19am
OK, I'm back from Cabaret, and I'll just give my first impressions really quickly, as it is late. (note to BobbyBubby, I know that you raved about this production, so please don't get too upset over some of my observations).
- I was right in thinking the entirely red production was a little grating, and actually worked to help heighten the book scenes for me more (since these scenes din't have the ultra stylized "Vegas production of Cabaret" look to them). Out of the three versions that I've seen (Village Theatre in 1993, which follows the original Cabaret fairly closely, and the Mendes tour with Joely Fisher at the Paramount), I've actually was more interested in the book scenes and numbers with this version.
- Nick Garrison was good as the Emcee, but was stuck somewhere between the (more) sanitized Joel Grey version and the completely grotesque version of Alan Cumming, and doesn't do anything to really reach the level of either. Good, but not definitive. A lot of his "banter" after the "Kick Line" sequence sadly fell flat, the only real laugh was when he basically called the ladies at one of the tables (one table had 4 women and one man) whores. I disagree with your observation on his delivery of "She wouldn't look Jewish at all". He just merely yelled out the line, and it actually got giggles from the audience.
- Tari Kelly was also good, but I have yet really seen a Sally that I truly love. I believe that Sally somehow becomes the weakest link in most productions, but she is a tough character to sell. Didn't completely love her delivery of the title song, but then again, I have yet to find a delivery that I completely adore. Everyone else around me seemed to really like it though.
- Suzy Hunt and Alan Fitzpatrick I really loved (though Suzy's characterization of Frl. Schneider at times wavered continuity wise). Alan was very heartbreaking as Herr Schultz. As I said earlier, since all thier scenes and numbers were book scenes, I really liked these scenes. The "Cabaret" numbers almost seemed to get in the way, and I wanted the action to go back to them more.
- Angie Louise at Frl. Kost was good (but the role is basically a characiture anyway, so it is fairly hard to get wrong). It's hard for me to remember back when she was Sally in the VT production, as it was a fairly long time ago. The only thing I do remember was that one of my high school theatre friends was working as a dresser for that show, and on the night that I went to see it, she told me they were trying on a different costume on her (a small little number for when she is done bedding Cliff), and she was really nervous about it, as the prior costume had more material to cover her up with. Seeing her now, I see she's even more voluptuous.
- One quibble about Tyson Forbes as Ernst Ludwig. I couldn't understand a word he said half the time. I don't know if he was just badly miked, or if it is the typical crappy sound that usually plagues 5th Ave and Paramount.
- Louis Hobson (who I absolutely adored in VT's Evita), was very good here again. He carried the youthful naivety of Cliff very well in the first act, and showed his progression well in the second half. The only thing I didn't like was he literally jumped around too much at some points (the second act where he and Sally argue about heading back to America, he did a hop-stomp to get Sally to stop, which I thought was a really weird choice). Interesting to see the audience still gasp when Hanz kissed him. I guess it was mostly from the predominately "blue haired" crowd that was there tonight (I wonder what they thought of the whole "S&M" version of Mein Herr, or the bustier wearing Emcee in "Two Ladies")
- Didn't love the end at all (besides *spoiler* seeing the band dressed up in Nazi garb after seeing them in drag all night). It just didn't do it for me. The show just seemed to end, but not really go anywhere with it. I didn't really get the sense that it was the end for them all. Don't really love "slo-mo" dancing when it is done on the stage either.
OK, that ended up a lot longer than I thought it was going to be, but there are my thoughts. Good, but nothing groundbreaking to me.
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