This production was one of the great loves of my life. It is, to this day, the best thing I have ever seen on stage. I didn't see it until very late in the game, and I always wish I could have had more time with it because I loved it so much. But I got to see it three times, and I'm grateful for that.
I had seen commercials on t.v. for the show over the years, and was always really intrigued by them, but my parents had a very tight stronghold on what kinds of things I was allowed to see and watch as a kid. The t.v. and radio commercials were out in full force in the couple of months following the announcement that it was closing, and I would ask my mom every time we saw or heard one if we could go see it. I didn't know what it was, I didn't know the story or the music or anything, but I was so taken with the image of Alan Cumming as the Emcee that I wanted to go see for myself what it was all about.
My mom finally agreed to take me to see it. I was 17, I think, but a very sheltered 17 and had never seen anything like it. I remember my mom was nervous about taking me, and I could tell she was uncomfortable about watching it with me whole time. But from the first moments, I was in heaven. I'll never forget how I instantly fell in love with the inside of that theater, and how mesmerizing it was to walk into a room where, truly, you felt like you had stepped through a door and back in time.
I was in awe through the whole thing. We saw Jon Secada as the Emcee, who was certainly not great and creepy in all of the wrong ways, but I still fell (see username) so much for the character, whose impishness and mysteriousness and ambiguous beauty were just so fascinating to me. We saw Susan Egan as Sally, too, who I have always thought was just lovely in the role, excepting that perhaps she sang too well.
I think the thing I remember most clearly from that night, though, is that at the end, after the lights went down, there was just dead silence. And when they came back up for the curtain call, I just looked at my mom as if to say, "That's it?" I was stunned -- that it was over, that the ending was what it was. I was silent for hours after that. I just didn't know what to say. For those that know me, you know my silence is perhaps the most accurate measure of how deeply I've been moved.
I went back to see Adam Pascal, who surprised me with his mischief and his gusto, a few weeks later, and then saw it again on closing day, the second to last show. If I could pick one thing to bring back to Broadway, I'm pretty sure this production would be it. I miss it every season.
It was years before I understood (let alone in a way I could put into words) the specifics of what makes the kind of theater that I love. But this production shaped a lot of what I came to gravitate toward, and now aspire to in my own work. I loved it so much. It was daring and sexy and dirty and dark and disturbing -- everything I never knew before that night that musical theater could be, and everything, years later, I know Cabaret
should be.
... none of that turned out as well or as evocative as I wanted it to be. For some reason, I always find this one hard to write about. I can never quite capture it in words; it's better just in the snapshot memories I still have.
A work of art is an invitation to love.
Updated On: 9/28/11 at 04:39 PM
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