Sam Mendes' Cabaret - If you witnessed the production, please help — Page 3

"I'll disagree with you on that one as far as Jennifer Jason Leigh goes. She was (to me) the best Sally I ever saw. She was also 100% different than anyone else who did the role before or after her. I remember her as being an extremely manic depressive Sally who was filled with this rage inside of her that I can't even describe. THAT is a performance that deserved to be preserved."

I do believe there is press reel footage of her.

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Speaking of Emcees, I saw it with Adam Pascal, often maligned for his acting deficiencies, but I thought he was terrific in the role. He was paired with Susan Egan who was amazing.

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That's exactly the ambivalence that line is supposed to feel after the Emcee says that line. It's a similar effect as that achieved in "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," which seems at first to be a beautiful folk song and ends as a fascist anthem.

The line actually seemed so offensively anti-Semetic in the original production and made 1967 audiences so uncomfortable that they had to change it to "She isn't a meeskite at all"--a harmless Yiddish joke and a reference to the earlier song that robbed the show of one its most effective moments. The idea--even back in 1967--was that the show is SUPPOSED to make the audience increasingly aware of the creeping Naziism and increasingly uncomfortable by it.

NPH performed it perfectly.

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Kander and Ebb and Hal Prince intended the line to elicit scattered unthinking titters and they intended you to be made uncomfortable by the laughter of your fellow audience members.

The intention was that those audience members would also catch themselves laughing at what they thought was simply a perfectly timed punchline and, in the end, everyone would realize how easily people slip into bigotry.

I can't vouch for the intentions of Sasha Baron Cohen.

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They received a lot of pressure from 1967 Jewish groups during the Boston tryout because of the line. A rabbi threatened to organize a boycott. According to Fred Ebb, the ladies of the B'nai B'rith complained that, because the Emcee's dancing partner was wearing a gorilla suit, the implication of the line was that all Jewish women looked like gorillas.

The pressure grew so intense that Hal Prince (as producer) overruled Hal Prince (as director) and told Fred Ebb that he had to change the line or the theater parties that had booked the advance sales would cancel and the show would not have enough of an advance to open on Broadway.

John Kander later said that "Decisions that are made under pressure like that are almost always regretted." And Fred Ebb said that coming up with that second punchline was "one of the most difficult tasks I ever faced in the theater." Hal Prince admitted it had been cowardly of him to insist, but that he didn't regret doing so: The show was more important than that one line.

And they were all happy when Fosse restored it for the movie.

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Updated On: 9/28/11 at 10:37 AM

It's also possible to laugh at the awfulness of the thinking underlying the line without finding the joke to be actually humorous, just as you can laugh at Hannibal Lechter's dialog without thinking cannibalism is funny.

Of course, I can't speak to the motivation of the people in the audience. But laughter doesn't always denote approval.

I love the Donmar recording, but I don't like how much it's missing. Most notably, no Don't Tell Mama. I cannot tell you, however, how much I wish I had seen the Mendes revival while it was here. I know there are bootlegs, but none could ever compare, or so I'm told.

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A guy I used to know once said that he had a liaison with whoever played Emcee in the tour (at least the Phoenix leg). Would this have been Norbert?

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Did anyone see Teri Hatcher as Sally in the first national tour? The reviews I've seen aren't very pleasant, but I'm wondering if anyone posting here actually witnessed the performance.

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