Kander and Ebb (composer and lyricist) don’t choose easy subjects for their musicals and Cabaret is a series of love stories (hetro’ and homo-sexual) set against the backdrop of 1930s Berlin. The decadence of the capital’s nightclubs contrast with the rising threat of the Nazi party.
We enjoyed the film so much that when the stage play was revised at the Savoy Theatre in London this autumn, we decided we had to go. The role of Emcee (played so creepily by Joel Grey in the film) was to be taken by Will Young and that of Sally Bowles by former EastEnders actress Michelle Ryan.
Will Young is well known as the winner of the ITV talent show Pop Idol and is one of the few reality show winners to carve out a successful career lasting longer than the year after the show. He’s grown on me over the years and the camp, louche and creepy role of Emcee could have been made for him. Michelle Ryan was an unknown quantity, I didn’t know that she could sing or dance. She was popular in EastEnders as Kat Slater’s troublesome daughter, Zoe and then went on to play the Bionic Woman in a US TV series that was an almighty flop.
We managed to get tickets for the show last Friday and went along with Pauline and Chris and Jane and Alan Crossland. It was Pauline’s birthday, so we arranged to have dinner in the Savoy Grill before the show.
The Savoy is a wonderful place, sumptuous and beautifully restored. I was to meet my wife and friends there around 5.30pm and for me it was a quick ride on the District Line to Embankment and a short walk up to the Strand, so I arrived fashionably early at about 5.15. I would have liked to have had a cocktail in the American Bar, but there were no tables free, so I sat in the foyer and waited for them. They were a little late, but the Grill had opened, so we took our table.
It was a very nice meal. I had champagne, omelette Arnold Bennett and salt-marsh lamb with colcannon mash and savoy cabbage. We’d eaten off the main menu (it was a treat) but the Crosslands had gone for the cheaper set, pre-theatre menu so there was a negotiation when we came to pay. Our share was £120 which is expensive, but the food was very good and the service top notch. we were also only a few yards from the theatre so were able to stroll across 15 minutes before the start.
The audience were very keen for the show to be good, so it was a good atmosphere from the start. The set was minimalist. The band was sited on a mezzanine above the stage and the main props were a long ladder suspended at the top that could slide across the stage and a set of wheeled steps that were pushed and spun about at will. Both were used to give height to performers and as part of the dance moves. The dancers were brilliant, lots of leaps and flying moves, great choreography and good singing.
Will Young, as expected, made a very good Emcee and Michelle Ryan was stunning to look at, very good voice, but her acting let her down. It seemed almost am-dram at times and she failed completely to convey the intensity of the love affair between her character and Clifford Bradshaw. There was a much different plot line in the stage play, but it worked well and the comedy songs such as Money makes the World go Round and Two Ladies were really well done. Tomorrow Belongs To Me, which is a chilling moment in the film, was given a different treatment, but no less chilling.
This was a much darker production than the film and the ending was stunning. In a representation of the repression of the Berlin nightclub culture by the Nazi party, the letters KABARET stand on the stage and are pushed over one by one by a Nazi as Will Young sings the closing song. As the letters fall, the chorus strip naked and stand against the back wall to be joined by Will Young at the end of the song. It’s clearly the inside of the gas chamber and lighting simulates the introduction of poison gas and the death of the cast. Many cabaret performers and writers were arrested and killed by the Nazis and the cabaret had political, satirical themes as well as songs and sex.
It got a standing ovation.
We were booked onto the 11.30 train, so there was some time to kill. I’d have gone for a drink, but the rest wanted tea, so we went back in the Savoy for a cuppa (I'm destined never to have a cocktail in the American bar). I had tea and Margaret had G&T. Annoyingly, the Peterborough party had come via East Coast, so my season ticket wouldn’t work on the way home and I had to spend £28 on a one-way ticket. I could have had a splendid cocktail for that in the Savoy.
We were back to London on Sunday morning to clear a few things from Tom and Hannah’s flat - their TV, which I swapped for Margaret’s so I had something to watch while flat-sitting next week, a painting, his sample book from MCN and his Panama hat. We also took the opportunity to clear leaves and mulch from the path, patio and drains. It was an early start, so we were back in Peterborough for 11.15. I’ve put the big TV in our lounge, so it gets some use until he can take it back to Brussels. Margaret was ready to moan about the size of the screen, but she was commendably restrained. She now has a decent TV in her bedroom as I’ve shuffled the lounge TV to the sitting room and the sitting room TV to her bedroom. When Tom takes his TV back, I’ll buy a new one.
It’s interesting how the Sky+ box interacts with your TV. Tom’s big TV never looked very good in standard definition and I always thought that was down to its size. However, when I plugged my TV into the Sky+ HD box, my TV looked awful in SD. Down in Highgate last week, I tuned Tom’s TV into Freeview and the quality was great even in SD. With my old Humax Freesat PVR, there was no difference between SD and HD (or a very small one). Why is this? Does the Sky+ HD box deliberately make SD look poor, so people will run HD. Certainly since I’ve had it, I’ve abandoned SD channels unless I really have to watch one.
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