“For me, one of the most powerful essences of this show [Cabaret] is about the conse- quences of wearing blinders and not accepting reality…. And I think that right now, there’s a lot of denial going on with people not feeling and trying hard to keep themselves from feeling…. It’s about people not really paying attention to what’s going on in their world.”
—Joel Grey, Playbill for 1987 Broadway revival of Cabaret. Grey originated the role of the Emcee in the 1966 Broadway production, and also played the part in the 1972 film and in the 1987 Broadway revival.
“[Cabaret] was up there with The Crucible or The Homecoming or any other play of the 20th century that deserves to be reinvented and rediscovered generation to generation: it’s a great piece of theatre.”
—Sam Mendes, director of the 1998 revival of Cabaret, speaking with Matt Wolf in Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom.
“To us, at least, [Cabaret] was a play about civil rights, the problem of blacks in America, about how it can happen here…. What drew me to Cabaret had very little to do with Sally Bowles…. What attracted the authors and me was the parallel between the spiritual bankruptcy of Germany in the 1920s and our country in the 1960s. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers, the march on Selma, the murder of the three young men, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner.”
—Harold Prince, director of the 1966 premiere production of Cabaret, in his autobiography, Contradictions.
“I don’t do musicals; they’re not my bag. I don’t really want to—the Emcee, yuck. I had a problem, and still sort of do, about ending a sentence and bursting into song. I came back to Sam and said, ‘Look, if I’m going to do this, I really want it to be proper—not shlocky or musical theatre-y, but the way it was done at the time.’”
—Alan Cumming speaking with Matt Wolf in Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom. Cumming played the Emcee in the 1993 and 1998 Mendes productions.
“Researching Cabaret, I listened to German jazz and vaudeville songs more than anything else, and then I just forgot about it. On any show, I may listen to the music of a particular style or region, and I forget all about it. I trust that there will be some kind of stylistic influence in what I’m doing, but it’s a thing I do unconsciously while listening.”
—John Kander, Colored Lights: Forty Years of Words and Music, Show Biz, Collaboration and All That Jazz.
“The Emcee could be almost the eyes of the audiences, luring them in at the very beginning and yet challenging them once they’re in.”
—Alan Cumming speaking with Matt Wolf in Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom.
“At the beginning, it’s very seductive. Then, half-way through, you kind of feel the doors lock and the chill of the encroaching Third Reich, and the Nazis taking over, along with the decadence of prewar Berlin.”
—Rob Marshall, choreographer of 1998 revival of Cabaret, Cabaret The Illustrated Book and Lyrics.
“Instead of putting the narrative first and the singers and dancers wherever a small corner can be found for them, it pops the painted clowns and gartered girls directly into our faces, making them, in effect, a brightly glazed window—with a musical staff scrawled all over it—through which we can perceive the people and the emotional patterns of the plot….Cabaret lunges forward to insist on music as mediator between audience and characters, as lord and master of the revels, as a mocking Master of Ceremonies without whose ministrations we should have no show at all.”
—Walter Kerr, New York Times, 1966.
“Calling it Cabaret was Joe Masteroff’s idea. The life of the cabaret, a metaphor for Germany.”
—Harold Prince, Contradictions.
“It’s really about the central mystery of the 20th century—how Hitler could have happened. And it’s important that we go on asking the question whether or not we can find some sort of answer. Cabaret uses the entertainment, the atmosphere, the lure and allure of the club to pull the audience in and show them what they have become part of by sitting and watching it. And that central metaphor is the reason for setting the show in the club. It turns out to be the club that puts on the story rather than a story that contains within it a club.”
—Sam Mendes, Playbill for 1998 Broadway revival.
Left: The original Broadway cast of Cabaret, with Joel Grey at center; Right: 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret, with Natasha Richardson as Sally and Alan Cumming as Emcee.
Compiled by Rachel Hutt, a second-year dramaturgy student in the
A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University
