Just prior to the opening of the new Roundabout production of Cabaret starring Alan Cumming and Michelle Williams the two were interviewed by The New York Times on CUNY TV along with the director Sam Mendes about the rehearsal process in which all three were then involved. Having won a Tony Award in 1998 for his first turn as the Emcee in the musical play, Cumming was ecstatic to be recreating the role and said that “the timing felt just right” for another go round of Cabaret. Upon further questioning on this subject, Cumming answered, “Well, the wind of Fascism has a way of popping up in strange places. Now Putin is going after and purging gay men – and women too – in the same way that Hitler did during the Weimar period in Germany. Remember the pink triangle? Gay men and Gypsies were the targets of the Nazi storm troopers – and think of Uganda where to be gay could end in death. I think “Cabaret” seems more relevant today than ever as dictators grab elections and go after individuals that they regard as ‘different’ or ‘dangerous’ to their regime.” Michelle Williams who played Marilyn Monroe in the movies in My Week With Marilyn to great acclaim and who is making her Broadway debut as Sally Bowles The Toast of Mayfair said on the interview show that she was still going deep into her own psyche and emotions to find Sally, but was overjoyed to be tackling the role and to be playing opposite Alan Cumming.
The Studio 54 Theater has been literally transformed into the Kit Kat Klub with small lamp-lit tables which helps to transport the audience back to the Berlin Weimar period of 1929-1930 just as Hitler and his Nazi Party were on the rise. It should be said at this point that Alan Cumming as a kind of madcap Master of Ceremonies and Michelle Williams as Sally could not be better. Cumming of course is perfection in an over-the-top performance that is at once outrageous and hysterically uproarious. Williams is wisely understated in her approach and rather than belting out the song in a loud showbiz Liza way, instead tackles it from underneath. By the time she delivers the title Come-to-the-cabaret song she seems almost downtrodden and broken and in the midst of a total nervous breakdown. Linda Emond as Fraulein Schneider, Danny Bersten as Herr Schultz, and Bill Heck as the bi-sexual Clifford Bradshaw are nothing short of superb as is the rest of the astonishing, sexy, and talented Kit Kat Boys and Kit Kat Girls who dance, sin, and yes, play all those honky tonk instruments that comprise the great Kander and Ebb score. The character of Clifford is in a sense Christopher Isherwood himself who wrote Berlin Stories from which Cabaret emerged. There was of course the Broadway play I Am a Camera written by John Van Druten which in 1952 starred Julie Harris who went on to repeat the role of Sally in the film.
Before the end of the first act which involves a doomed love affair between Sally and Cliff as well as between Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz it is clear that the Nazi Party is dominate. Kristallnacht began the reign of terror and the persecution of German Jews. Also at the very end of the first act and on a second tier above the stage we see a spotlight focused on Cumming’s bare rear end with a swastika branded with black paint onto just one cheek. By play’s end, Cumming is in a grey prison suit on which both a prominent pink triangle along with a yellow star are imprinted. A blinding white jail-yard-like klieg light catches the Emcee, Sally and others from the Kit Kat Klub standing motionless staring straight ahead like deer caught in a headlight. This masterful production of Cabaret is a must see – go spend your money on this one. It’s worth every penny, nickel and dime.
Bullets Over Broadway the musical version of the Woody Allen movie is another matter. It also is set in the Depression era of the l930s in New York City where gangsters in pinstripe suits and carrying machine guns seem to rule what makes it onto the Broadway stage. The Playbill program credits tell us that Bullets Over Broadway – the musical – is written by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by Allen with Douglas McGrath and that the direction and choreography are from Susan Stroman. The spectacular quick on-again-off-again sets are from Santo Loquasto and they include everything from a railroad car to a for-real 1930s gangster’s super-roadster. That automobile is driven onstage twice to pop off troublesome characters like Olive Neal played by Helene York the gun moll girlfriend of the lead mobster played by Vincent Pastore. The problem with this glitzy busy show is that somehow Allen’s book and Stroman’s choreography never seem in any way to merge; and Allen has taken to inserting Borscht Belt jokes instead of developing sympathetic characters that read – think Guys and Dolls a great musical on a similar subject.
I kept thinking back to another period Broadway musical called Legs Diamond starring Peter Allen (no relation to Woody) which was one that is thought of as the worst ever produced on Broadway with maybe another worst being My Name is Rachel Lily Rosenbloom and Don’t You Ever Forget It directed by both Ron Link and Tom Eyen. Woody Allen here also insisted on tried and true vintage songs of the period, such as Let’s Misbehave and Runnin’ Wild as opposed to bringing in a new original score which might have been better. The old classic 1930s songs Allen has selected in no way push the plot forward and sometimes liberties are taken with the original lyrics in the refrains and chorus. TV actor Zach Braff in his Broadway debut plays a would-be nerdy playwright modeled after Allen, like the characters Allen usually has devised for himself in his movies, who aspires to have a Broadway hit. Introduced to a gangster who runs a Prohibition nightclub he begins to realize his dream. The character talks on and on about his psychiatrist and about maybe going to a rehab. Clearly this seems as if we are not in the 1930s but in the present day. The performance by Braff is one of grimacing, wincing, ducking, and hiding. A good actor in his first film Garden State, in which he also wrote and directed, in this he seems just lost in the maze. Allen inserts some below-the-belt jokes and has the shrill gun moll Olive equally ill at ease in the mix up. One particularly ribald joke has the gangster boyfriends bragging about her ability to pick up a quarter from the table using her vagina. Another has the character Helen Sinclair, played by Marin Mazzie serving Prohibition highballs made with lighter fluid. Enough said for Bullets.
My strong recommendation here is that anyone interested in the American Songbook of the 1920s and 1930s skip Woody Allen’s Bullets Over Broadway and just tune into the theater of the air known as The Big Broadcast hosted by Rich Conaty every Sunday at 8pm for the last 43 years. Conaty, a true musicologist of the music of the 1920s and the Depression era spins 78 rpm records from the period and with it – and in an upbeat manner – discusses in detail stories and facts about the recording artist and the composers. This program is not just an old timer trip down memory lane – but the real thing in terms of music – from Ruth Etting to Eddie Cantor and early Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee you will not be disappointed. The Big Broadcast (named after a 1932 Crosby movie) is hosted by Conaty on the air from 8pm to midnight Sundays on WFUV – 90.7 FM or you can also tune in live via wfuv.org where previous shows are archived.
Note to Woody Allen. Hope you listen to The Big Broadcast. It’s Radio Days all the way.
