The Emcee is the core of Cabaret. He entertains the audience through songs, banter, sex, and alcohol. The Master of Ceremonies distracts his patrons, letting them forget the political and economic chaos outside.
The Emcee is the core of Cabaret. He entertains the audience through songs, banter, sex, and alcohol. The Master of Ceremonies distracts his patrons, letting them forget the political and economic chaos outside.
The Emcee, according to Richard Gilman in Newsweek, “serves as a metaphor for what’s happening outside the cabaret.” The Emcee sings about greed, sex, anti-Semitism, and apathy. Under his grotesque makeup, he is a beacon of truth. While Cliff and Sally party to excess and Berlin flirts with catastrophe, the Emcee reminds us of what is lurking underneath.
Joel Grey originated the role of the Emcee for the 1966 Broadway production and reprised the part for the 1972 Fosse film and the 1987 Broadway revival. Charming and disturbing, Grey described the Master of Ceremonies as “…a sort of marionette… like a ventriloquist’s dummy.” Gliding across the stage, Grey flashes a big smile and expands his eyes to saucers. Telling a few dirty jokes, he urges the audience to relax. In an elegant tux, white face, and rouged cheeks, he twirls a cane like a Weimar dandy. Grey’s Emcee may be odd, but he is harmless.
But just when the lulled spectators think they are safe, Grey’s Emcee turns sinister. All of a sudden the sex becomes vulgar as he gropes two women at the same time. What starts as a parody of a romantic love song ends with a chilling anti-Semitic remark. Seeing their reflections in an enormous mirror hanging on the upstage wall, the patrons slowly realize they have been lured into fascism. Grey’s performance leaves the audience sick.
In 1993, Alan Cumming radically reinterpreted the role of the Emcee. In American Theatre Roger Copeland described Cumming’s portrayal as a “seduction machine who slinks out of a black-leather trench coat and greets the audience in three languages and at least that many sexual orientations. Whatever you want—whatever your fancy or fantasy—this protean, gyrating, omni-sexual creature will fulfill it for you.” Cumming thrusts sex and despair into the spotlight. Tattoos, glitter, and black lipstick replace the white face and red cheeks of Grey. Cumming wears only a black bow tie against his bare chest. Bruises and track marks run up his arms. As he sings “I Don’t Care Much,” he shoots himself up with heroin.
Alan Cumming’s bruised and beaten body replaced Joel Grey’s wide-eyed, satanic puppet. Pain radiated from Cumming’s character work. Critics called Cumming’s Emcee a chameleon. During the song “If you Could See Her,” Cumming dances with a gorilla. Everyone enjoys the shtick. Out of nowhere toxic waste bubbles up to the surface. When Cumming utters the last line, “She doesn’t look Jewish at all,” he hisses it as a threat. According to Sam Mendes, who directed the 1993 London and 1998 Broadway revivals, when Cumming sings that line, “the musical turns into a black-as-pitch play. The audience is a willing participant in the first part of the evening, but then the doors lock from the outside and they become prisoners.”
The role of the Emcee has changed with each new production. In a 2003 interview, composer John Kander said, “When Cabaret was first done, it was fresh and imaginative and no one had ever seen anything like it. And in a funny way, that’s what Sam [Mendes] did for a whole other generation: we got back the feeling Cabaret had had the first time out.” It’s been twelve years since the second Broadway revival opened. By casting the Emcee as a woman, played by rock performer Amanda Palmer, the American Repertory Theater will give the Emcee another jolt.
Rachel Hutt is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./ MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.
