I remember the 1972 Bob Fosse film “Cabaret” as a joyous celebration of sensual excess in pre-Nazi Germany, with some dark undertones.
The production that currently struts and shocks at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs’ Theatreworks turns that around. Director Scott RC Levy’s “Cabaret” is a bleak yet alluring place that delivers brief moments of joy before taking you to the darkest places imaginable.
I can’t say I enjoyed it. But I’ve rarely felt such a gut punch in the theater.
Its emotional resonance comes partly from the clever staging, with audience members at cocktail tables that make them part of the infamous Berlin Kit Kat Klub. Intimate, erotic, and immersive doesn’t even begin to describe that experience.
The story revolves around American would-be novelist Clifford Bradshaw, played with appropriate earnestness and naivety by Ben Griffin, who travels to Berlin and gets seduced by the Kit Kat Klub, as well as its sexy female and male denizens.
Clifford ultimately falls in love with the club’s star dancer, Sally Bowles, played by newcomer Miranda McCauley.
McCauley’s extraordinary performance plays such a heartbreaking counterpoint to Liza Minnelli’s in the film. McCauley’s Sally knows she’s just made a horrible deal with the devil, abandoning a life of love and hope for one of false security and endless dread.
She sings the title song with a bitterness and self-loathing that strikes to the heart of what makes this version so different. When she sings “right this way, your tables waiting,” you’ll want to run rather than pull up a seat.
That’s because this is a “Cabaret” for our time. It’s a “Cabaret” that draws obvious parallels to modern fascism. And when we start to see swastikas in the Kit Kat Klub, and some characters dismiss it as only politics, we want to shout at them to wake up.
The performers are universally extraordinary, from the bawdy dancers to the principals (delighted to see Sally Lewis Hybl back on stage in her wonderful turn as the morally conflicted landlady).
But if it’s one person this play belongs to, it’s Sammy Gleason as The Emcee.
My god. If anyone was ever born to play this part, it’s Gleason who puts the master in master of ceremonies. He is the commanding, sensual, cocky, dynamically expressive embodiment of the Kit Kat Klub. He sneers, cajoles, seduces, sings, dances and shamelessly steals every scene he’s in.
But like the club itself, his Emcee proves ultimately soulless, a huckster who knows he’s selling nothing but a distraction from the evils that are coming our way. And director Levy makes it clear that distraction – the wine, the band, the sex, the razzamatazz – enjoys an intimate relationship with that evil.
After a surprisingly chilling ending, the stage goes black, and the audience sits in darkness, not knowing, for a moment, if applause is even appropriate in the grim world created for us. But once the claps starts, it became thunderous, accompanied by an appropriate standing ovation.
Get out and go
“Cabaret”
Ent Center for the Arts
Dusty Loo Bon Vivant Theatre
5225 N. Nevada Ave.
Thursdays and Fridays at 7 p.m.
Saturdays at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.
Sundays at 4 p.m.
Through Oct. 12
Tickets are $12-$46.50 at tickets.entcenterforthearts.org.
Warren Epstein is chair of the Pikes Peak Bulletin board and does not accept a payment for his writings here.
