Cabaret in Concert @ Lyric Stage
—Martha Heimberg
Lyric Stage brings a high-kicking, menacing in-concert production of Cabaret to the Majestic Theater—and, boy, are we ever relieved to hear once again that “life is a cabaret!”
Until it isn’t.
John Kander and Fred Ebb’s 1966 musical still thrills, chills and horrifies, as we move from the permissive ribaldry of Berlin in the late ‘20s to the rise of the Third Reich and the specter of Nazi death camps in the future. Quite a trip for a single night, as knowing director/choreographer Penny Ayn Maas drives all 20 cast members full-throttle, and our city’s go-to music conductor Vonda K. Bowling puts the pedal to the metal with her rousing 11-member all-female band. Talk about over-the-top girl power on that red velvet bandstand.
Lyric Stage “in concert” means minimal set design, but full costumes, choreography, lighting, and orchestration. The grandeur of the historic Majestic Theater with its stuffed red velvet seats is already a pretty terrific set for a Weimar-era nightclub. At intermission, couples of various gender mixes were taking selfies in the huge, gilded mirrors lining the lobby. Theater is Pride Week 4-ever.
Our guide from start to finish is the Emcee of the Kit Kat Club, Lyric Stage executive artistic director Christopher J. Deaton—a muscled, alluring hunk of whatever-gender-you-prefer as he “Willkommen’s” us to leave our hang-ups on the curb, and to stomp and whistle at the beautiful people on the stage. The night I saw the show, the audience hollered and cheered as directed, especially for the curvy Kit Kat Klub girls in black bustiers and thigh-high gartered stockings. And for those leggy boys, too, sometimes wearing the same outfit. With every shape, size, and color, this chorus line is athletic, suggestive, bold, vulgar…whatever the song demands.
Costume designer Megan A. Liles makes “everybody beautiful” as advertised. Her sequined, deeply fringed dresses for Sally and the Emcee would make a tree stump look sexy.
Deacon, more often the handsome romantic tenor in Lyric productions, reveals the breadth of his acting skills as the Emcee. Pared down to I-can-do-that dancing weight, his head shaved and shining, and wearing a muscle shirt split to the navel to reveal an enviable six-pack, he preens and flirts like an androgynous peacock. He’s hilarious and bawdy singing “Two Ladies,” and sports the longest legs in the chorus line singing “Money,” that cynical anthem to capitalism.
Later, he’s downright sinister dancing with a costumed ape in “If You Could See Her,” with its chilling anti-semitic finish line. From his mincing, ebullient start to the show’s sagging, dark finish, Deaton delivers the feel and the fate of a self-deluded society teetering on collapse. Hard not to note that today’s news is filled with the Congressional hearings of the January 6th insurrection attempt.
As Sally Bowles, Catherine Carpenter Cox also transforms, from the saucy, tough-girl delivery of “Mein Herr” and “Don’t Tell Mama” at the outset, to her wistful, moving rendition of “Maybe This Time,” a song revealing her shiveringly deep longing for the “home” of love. Great song. She also sings a charming duet with a quietly sturdy Preston Page, as the hapless bi-sexual writer Sally fancies. “Perfectly Marvelous” is a special kind of love song, and anyone who’s ever been in a lop-sided relationship must chuckle while hearing.
Barbara Catrett’s frank and forthright Fraulein Schneider, the German boarding house owner, and David Fenley’s gentle, textured Herr Schultz, the Jewish fruit store owner, bring the swelling heartbeats of surprised aging lovers to the show. You need a hand to squeeze when they sing about pineapples as a courting gift, and for their charming duet “Married,” with its sunny certainty about the future.
Special “Brava!’ here to Bowling and her badass band, whipping it up when we need to get there, and slowing it down to hear an exquisite line or lilting half-sob. The band’s last gasp of cacophony and discord, in which all harmony or narrative breaks down, is just wrenching. And so right. It’s a musical, and it crashed!
How lucky are we to have Lyric Stage and these beautiful people right here in downtown Dallas. Okay, it’s just for four days, but still.
WHEN: Through June 12
WHERE: Majestic Theatre, Main Street, Dallas
WEB: lyricstage.org
