NEW YORK — “Mamma Mia! The Party,” which you can see in London, is one thing. John Kander, Fred Ebb and Joe Masteroff’’s masterpiece, especially as enshrined on Broadway in a searing and unforgettable 1998 revival starring Natasha Richardson and Alan Cumming, is entirely another. “Cabaret” is not a high-priced bacchanal; it’s Broadway’s greatest cautionary tale about the dangers of letting a party inure you to a fascist takeover.
So, sure, go ahead and persuade an audience to arrive an hour early so they can imbibe Moët & Chandon and $29 cocktails in multiple new bars, funnel them through an alley and lower the lights so they have no idea where they are within the maze of an unrecognizable August Wilson Theatre. Invite them on stage to dance with the Nazi sympathizers of the Kit Kat Club. And then go ahead and do “Cabaret,” with plenty of people half-sozzled or ready for a snooze.
Some folks who should have known better have let the so-called interactive craze go to their heads. “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club?” Like that great title needed five more words.
None of this would matter, arguably, if the production within this naked attempt to offer a value-added experience to increase revenue was worth seeing. Alas, outside of Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell’s Fraulein Schneider and Herr Shultz, it’s not.
Here, you have one of the sexiest shows ever written weirdly afeared of eroticism, as it is of actual vulnerability.
Instead of silky seduction ready to turn on an unsuspecting audience, this dystopian production runs headlong into a fatal error: If the Kit Kat Club were whacked out, wasted and so far removed from quotidian Berlin, none of the Nazis would be going. Ah, but they did. We’re watching them.
Eddie Redmayne, the Emcee of this unfortunate shebang and an actor of enormous talent, here comes off as a creepy human jack-in-the-box, popping up from the floor, twisting his body and voice into all manner of bizarre contours, but never really allowed to say so much as a “good evening” as a recognizable bloke. One wanted to shout from the seats: just say the lines, Eddie, they’re really good as they are without all that extra.
Gayle Rankin is as dystopian a Sally Bowles as one ever did see, but whereas the greats in this role, like Richardson or Liza Minnelli, were all about the tensions inherent in this posh girl from Mayfair, Rankin does just one, screeching, messed-up thing. You get what she’s doing in the first few seconds and it never changes as events surely dictate. She’s highly committed, sure, but there’s nary a palpable moment of softness, gentleness, nervousness or any of other qualities that surely explain why Sally became the star attraction of this club, especially since there is nothing whatsoever appealing about this vocal performance.
The character Clifford Bradshaw is supposed to be another bundle of contradiction: seemingly a dull and disinterested writer but with a rising inner life, both sensual and political. Here, Ato Blankson-Wood is so bland as to be like Mr. Cellophane from another musical. Only Neuwirth and Skybell make sense of their roles; they are quite lovely and offer the only moments of honesty and emotional engagement.
You may look at all this differently. But I have to say that selling a dinner “upgrade” to the “Pineapple Room” offends me. That fruit is what Herr Schultz offers to his love, prior to being shipped off to a concentration camp, or so the show strongly implies, given that he is already in the Nazis’ sights. In this show, fruit is a symbol of generosity and love in a world of horrors. It’s not a flavor of costly cocktail nor a high-end status symbol. How gross.
At the August Wilson Theatre, 245 W. 52nd St., New York; kitkat.club/cabaret-broadway
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
