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Mickey-Jo saw Eva and Reeve in CABARET | Thoughts on Eva Noblezada, Reeve Carney & the new West End cast...
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Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com with nothing but respect and admiration for all of the alumni of this nearly four year production in the West End, I do think that this might be the strongest cast of cabaret at the KitKat Club since its first year in London. Vilka Min venue oh my God. Hey welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening to this on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theater. I am a professional theater critic and a content creator here on social media and today I'm going to be letting you know what I thought after I paid a Visit to the KitKat Club in London aka the Playhouse Theatre to see the brand new principal cast of Cabaret. One of my all time favorite musicals. One of my most viewed productions on of all time. At this point I think I figured it out and this was my 14th visit. Could I possibly be on 14? That means I've seen Cabaret a grand total of 17 times because I've seen a couple of other productions but I think I have now with this most recent cast in this new revival by Rebecca Frecknell alone seen 11 different MCs and 11 different Sally Bowles is, which is a really thorough basis on which to be able to talk about the minute differences between them and in some instances the sizable differences them. And it's why at this point what I enjoy perhaps more than anything else is bold performances that find new interpretations of these iconic and formidable characters. Of course, like eating a steak, like sipping a glass of wine, we're also all going to have our own preferences about the kind of Sally Bowles or the kind of MC that we like to see on stage. So today, possibly after you have seen the show for yourself, or perhaps ahead of your visit to the KitKat club, or even just vicariously for those of you who are curious about this combination of performers who aren't going to get a chance to see them, I'm going to let you know little bit more about what even Obizada is like as Sally Bowles currently in the West End and what Reeve Carney is like as the MC at the time of filming. The two of them are also a real life couple who are engaged to get married. This evening was their final performance in the show before they take a short break to go and get married before coming back to the West End production. Don't worry, you haven't missed them just yet, but the next audiences who see them are going to get to see them doing Cabaret as a married couple, which is another interesting layer and component of it for two characters who are not romantically entwined in the slightest in this production, who'd scarcely even interact with each other at all on stage. But I'm getting ahead of myself. We're going to talk about all of them as well as the new supporting cast members, including the fabulous icon of the musical theatre stage, Ruthie Henshall, who has joined this production as Fraulein Schneider. And if you have been lucky to see these performers already in these roles, I would love to know what you thought. Please share all of your thoughts and feelings in the comments section down below. While you're listening to mine, something about the outfit that I have on is not currently working. I was trying to go with Neckerchief. This is from the Broadway production and I was hoping that it would give Hadestown a little bit, but with the hat I think the combination of accessories here is just turning me into a boy scout. And even though I was a senior patrol leader and I'm very proud of the work that I did, when you bring that in proximity to a conversation about Cabaret, we go to some bad places. So I'm going to put this down right now. And while you begin typing your thoughts down below or click subscribe or turn on notifications, whatever you have to do to make sure that you don't miss any of my upcoming theater covers coverage, I am going to let you know what I thought of the new cast of Cabaret. So we're going to talk about Eva and Reeve in these roles. She, of course has played Sally Bowles previously on Broadway. She was the third actress in the Broadway revival. She played the role opposite Orville Peck. I believe I saw Eva in her first week of performances, perhaps a very early performance of hers I think I saw. So if nothing else, it's been really interesting to see her, Sally Bowles, not only in a different country, but also after she's had a lot of time in the role to find new qualities in it. And it's a very changed performance to my mind. Reeve, meanwhile, is playing this role for the first time and hasn't been in a major stage production, I don't think, since Hadestown on Broadway, which I had the good fortune of seeing him do. But before we talk about the two of them, I do want to give a little bit of an overview about this production and my feelings about it, which haven't particularly evolved. I've always thought that this is a really smart and thoughtful and vital and sadly, increasingly relevant production of the show. Only a few weeks ago here in the UK because it's very easy to talk about fascism in the US and why that's so pertinent, and how Broadway really needed Cabaret and when it needed it most. Unfortunately it closed. But our current political situation here in the UK is not entirely innocent either. There was a mass far right rally that descended on London a few weeks ago and sort of gathered outside of the Playhouse Theater, which meant that the company of Cabaret needed to be held inside of the building for their own safety. I think there were reports that some chanting from that could be heard during the matinee performance, which is obviously an incredibly eerie reminder of how timely the show is. The show, of course, which is set in late 1930s, someone corrects me about the exact timings of this every time. It's in Pre World War II Berlin with the rise of the Nazi Party in the backdrop. And at the forefront, a story about an American novelist who is traveling around Europe searching for inspiration. He happens upon the Kitkat Club and Sally Bowles, who is this explosive personality? She is a British nightclub performer. Perhaps she is a young wayward girl who is enjoying herself in tawdry society and getting by any way that she can. The mc, meanwhile, is, as the character's name suggests, the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Club and is perhaps mysterious, perhaps enigmatic in this production, perhaps is representative of the heart and soul of Berlin or all of Germany. The MC doesn't necessarily have as many specific personal characteristics or as formed an individual identity in this revival of the show as they have done previously in the Sam Mendes revival or in other versions of the show. And while I. I don't think I had any real, like, new light bulb moments this time around and nothing else occurred to me about this production, my overall and enduring emotional response was one of frustration about all of the comments and everything that has been said during the final few weeks of the show's run on Broadway and a lot of criticism that once again reignited and floated back to the surface, or perhaps even the parroting of things that people had heard elsewhere and were just regurgitating about, you know, accusing this production of having missed the point and misunderstood the show and its serious themes. There were people genuinely saying this show doesn't realize that it's about fascism because it's framing the whole thing as a party. And, you know, it's an old and tired joke that Brits make about Americans that they don't understand irony. But that would be a brilliant example of that shortcoming because, of course, this production understands the weight of its themes and the way that it's framed and the way that it's presented, the way that it's staged is all so deeply ironic with that haunting final image, one that I have said many times now I didn't really understand the first couple of times that I saw the show, but one that now speaks to me more and more profoundly, invoking a society that is headed for doom and that has become willfully complicit in whatever is coming politically, that being an image and a fate that obviously we should all be paying attention to a lot right now in the world. But before I depress myself anymore with political realities, let's talk about musical theater performances, beginning with Eva as Sally Bowles. So, like I said, I saw Eva Sally on Broadway early in the run, and I thought she was an entirely decent Sally Bowles. I thought it was characterized very well. I thought it was sung beautifully, probably one of the strongest Sally Bowles vocals. There have been a couple of them who have made the decision to not forsake too much of their own natural singing talent because there has been a question of whether or not Sally Bowles herself actually needs to be an at all decent singer because she is singing at this tawdry bar, she is not particularly successful. Cliff at the end of the show launches this criticism at her, saying, you don't have a real career. When are you going to accept that the only way you got this job or any job, was by sleeping with someone? And so in contradiction to Liza Minnelli's stellar vocals within the film, there have been many fantastic Sally Bowles over the years, some of the most definitive, in fact, who have not given a particularly strong vocal. Certainly a polished one. It has often been a lot more raw and jagged, a little bit shouty even. I'm thinking of the brilliant Jane Horrocks. I'm thinking of Natasha Richardson. I'm thinking of Jessie Buckley. With many of these performers being capable of a much more beautiful bel canto vocal delivery. I'm dangerously close to getting sidetra track now because we were talking about Eva, but my point is that Eva and also Marisha Wallace, didn't sacrifice a tremendous amount of their vocal ability to play this role. I think instead what we hear from Eva's vocal, particularly in the bigger songs, maybe this Time and Cabaret Life Is a Cabaret is a fantastic vocal performance that is not served neatly. The tonality of it remains clearly professional and first rate and fantastic, as does the but there are qualities of it that she allows to become a little more raw and a little more incendiary, and those are two of the real standout moments of the show. There is in each instance, or there was at the gala Knight performance, at least a huge applause that followed, and huge by the standard of the applause that I have seen Cabaret get at many different gala night performances now and on either side of the Atlantic. And the headline news for me here is that I think that in the time that she has spent in the show between when I first saw her and now, even Eva has gone from a really good Sally Bowles to one of my favorites of all time. I thought she was extraordinary last week. The detail in everything that she did, the playfulness in some of her early dialogue, but also the fear that she brought into it as well when she was trying to argue to keep her job with Max as she was getting fired. And that's still sort of emerging in the scene when she then imposes upon Cliff and asks if he would let her stay with him. There is also, like Marisha, a perhaps deliberately furtive quality which very much resonates with parts of the material. I think Marisha had spoken about the possibility that Sally might not actually really be English. And it kind of came across that she had this deliberately manufactured, perhaps more posh than she was, or perhaps even more English than she was accent. Because when Cliff asks her where she's from, she pointedly does not respond and then asks that he never ask her personal questions and that she will always volunteer the information if she wants to share it. Eva Sally has something of that quality to her as well. But like some of the other really brilliant Sally's, she is also incredibly youthful and she has that sense of naivety, but she sort of sits on the cusp because some of them feel perhaps forgivably naive to the developments in society around them. Sally is perhaps the last one of the principal characters to open her up rise to the rise of fascism and everything that is happening with the Nazi Party. Eva Sally feels young enough that that excuse can be made of her, but also just old enough that you start to question whether she is doing it deliberately. And it's not just about how old she reads on stage either. It's this combination of naive and knowing that she brings into the characterization. And there is just such detail. It is, aside from anything else and how well she sings it and performs it, a really layered and nuance, nuanced acting performance by which I was pretty blown away. All of which finally culminates in this scorching performance of the title number. Right towards the end of the show, she is screaming this out. It was literally show stopping at the KitKat Club. Perhaps also the most that I can recall being impacted by the power of that number in the way that it's staged, in the way that it's being created in this production. Since the very early days, since Amy Lennox and Jessie Buckley. I find it very difficult to really, truly rank all of the sallies that I've seen because, you know, people bring different qualities to it. But Eva's Sally is among those quintessential interpretations of the character. You will recognize this adjacent to the Liza Minnelli Sally Bowles. You will recognize this adjacent to many of the other most iconic interpretations. It is not an art off piste Sally, but it is one that works so well, oh, so well. And one of the most heartbreaking things in that number and in the final few scenes is the regret that she portrays as well. And she starts to feel really and truly helpless. Sally isn't always because of her foolishness and her decision to go back to the KitKat club and not to try and flee from or necessarily wake to everything that is growing darker around them. A difficult character sometimes to feel yourself endeared to, but you really feel for Eva's Sally in those.
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Tom Blythe Returns in the MGM plus.
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Original Series Billy the Kid Sheriff's on.
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Our Backs from the creator of Vikings I'm sick of being on the run from now on. You and me are the hunters.
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The legend ends here.
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They want to ride together, they can die together. Billy I told you all I ain't being taken alive. Tom Bl is Billy the Kid. Watch now only on MGM plus final scenes which absolutely brings us to Reeve Carney, I would say opposite her as the mc. That is the way that this production has been built with Sally and the MC as the two leading characters and Cliff just slightly behind them. It was of course built around the initial dual star performances of Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley, though as I said before, Sally and the MC don't overlap that often on stage and don't interact that much. I heard something that I don't all the way subscribe to, but that is curious to consider when seeing several moments of staging in this production, which is the notion of of Sally and the MC as being two different halves of a single entity. And if you start to consider some of the MC's scenes or perhaps all of the MC's scenes as not really happening or being more of an allegorical representation. Then you can start to examine the possibility of there being a little something to that. And there are several moments where the MC lurks behind Sally and moves in sequence with her, sort of like a shadow. But the two of them only really come together that I can recall on a couple of occasions. Now the MC introduces Sally a handful of times as the master of ceremonies, bringing on her performances in the club. One moment when they get to see each other is at the end of the song, perfectly marvelous. Sally has just brought her suitcase into the room that Cliff is renting from Fraulein Schneider and negotiated with both her and him that she will be allowed to stay there. And at the end of this, we then head towards a song called Two Ladies and the MC bursts up through the suitcase from Substage in an outfit that has evolved somewhat since the beginning of this production, but nowadays is a slightly cheaper, like if you ordered it online version of what Sally herself is wearing. Which comes now with an ad lib, or at least it did last week from Reeve Carney to say stop stealing my clothes. Which is one of many comedy punch lines that you can add in there as the little cherry on top of of that visual joke there. You could also say like, great, now one of us needs to go change anything of that ilk, but that's really just a playful little wink of a joke. The more substantial coming together of these two characters happens in the song I Don't Care Much. Sally and Cliff have just had a substantial fight and she is putting on an oversized suit and readying to head off to the KitKat club in defiance of him. Possibly she's also on route to a slightly traumatizing medical procedure that she is going to have done without his knowledge. And as the MC sing sings this chilly and harrowing haunting song, I Don't Care Much, the lyrics of which speak to emotional indifference and detachment in increasingly bleak times. At the climax of this moment, the two characters suddenly come into some version of a physical embrace. Earliest versions of this revival had the MC grabbing Sally physically and sort of shaking her in a quiet but dangerous rage. When Eva did it with Orville on Broadway, what I perceived in that moment was more of a desperately sad embrace between two kindred souls lost at sea. And if you assumed that you would see something similar to that with a real life engaged couple in these roles, you would be mistaken, because there was once more a very harsh and intimidating quality in the way that the MC suddenly turns towards and stares into the soul of Sally. But you are probably eager to know what I thought of Reeve in the role. And I think, though I didn't necessarily all the way see it coming. The MC is a really great role for Reeve Carney. A lot of the physicality and the eeriness of it as well as this semi ethereal. Who exactly is this person? Are they really real? Do they represent Germany? All of those characteristics suit Reeve as a performer very well. That was always the sort of magical and slightly away with the fairies side of Orpheus that Reeve managed to conjure very well. It was the more grounded moments where I think subsequent interpretations have found different qualities. But it works very well for his mc. And I was curious about the introductory moments because we have seen such charismatic performers who are very used to directly addressing audiences in the past couple of years with Rob Madge and Adam Lambert and Orville Peck. And Reeva's funny. Reeva is very funny in these first few scenes as the MC with a whole host of new ad lib material when introducing the different cabaret girls. Reeve has a few newer sides throughout the show, which is something that in the last few years we've been hearing more and more of MCs getting the chance to put in some of their own jokes. Reeves, I will say are some of the filthiest and the smuttiest that I think I have ever heard. I don't know who that came from, whether those were given to Reeve by whoever the current resident director creative team representatives are right now, or whether that was what Reeve found as an actor during the rehearsal process. Maybe that's a little bit of an insight into Reeves own personality. I don't know. I was slightly surprised because, you know, only knowing him on stage for Hadestown, I think of Reeve as a bit of a real life forest nymph with a guitar who sounds phenomenal. But that was also why I was so curious about what his MC was going to be and how he was going to make it work. Because there's a slightly glazed over quality that you can adopt with Orpheus as he's going through the show. And the MC needs to be piercing and needs to be direct and needs to have bite and he absolutely did. But he also had this sort of a salacious dirty wit to him as well where it felt like he was really indulging in those moments with the other dancers. He was really of that world. He felt like a member of that sort of underground queer bohemian family very naturally. And since I'm talking about ad libs and mentioning Hadestown a lot, I will say, there is what I believe to be the briefest little nod to Hadestown that has been put into the show. I cannot for the life of me remember what the original line was here, I think, at the very end of Two Ladies, after not only the two performers playing the two ladies, but also just about every other dancer from the KitKat club has crawled onto the stage and has circulated in this really lewd illustration of their own predilections and pastimes. At the end of this, there's something of a costume reveal with two German words written on hearts that are basically the only thing that the MC ends up wearing by the end of it. And I vaguely feel like before he used to call off stage and say, I'm coming or something to that effect. Effect. But he now, to the cabaret dancers who race off of the stage during the playout for this number, says, wait for me, I'm coming. And it didn't get an enormous response, even from people sat near me who I know knew Hadestown very, very well. It really works in the context of the show. It doesn't feel egregious, but it has to be a Hadestown nod. It's Reeves saying it. He is shouting off, saying the words, wait for me, I'm coming. And because the intonation is different and it's to time, not wait for me, I'm. Because it's like, wait for me, I'm coming. Like, you have to be listening for, I think, to pick up on the fact that, like, oh, they put a Hadestown line in there. Because during that whole sequence, people are shouting out random things. And it just works tonally. It feels like it could have been the original line, and wildly, maybe it was, but I'm pretty sure that it's a specific reference Easter egg, if you will, that's been put in there. Now, the other thing we know about Reeve as a performer is that sensational voice and the incredible range that he has. And there is an ent up the octave moment in I Don't Care Much, which only adds to the really haunting quality that that song has. But generally, I was just really delighted by how engaged he was with this material. It was such a departure from his Orpheus in almost every sense. They're very different characters. And for him to have been digging his nails into this role as much as he was was fantastic. I was delighted by that. Carrying on then to talk about some of the other new additions to the company. Baker Macassar is newly playing the role of Clifford Bradshaw, who is such a difficult character for this revival in particular to get right. And it worked quite well. When it was Amari Douglas, he still felt a little bit sidelined. And they haven't included all of the Cliff material that has ever been used. Another one who really worked in this role in was Michael Humka Lindsay. And I don't know if it's because he read like a slightly more eager young man. I think a lot of the Cliffs, sometimes, as they become the voice of reason in the second act, read a little too much more mature and responsible than Sally when they ought to feel like wayward kids together. But he is making the choice to see the world around him for what it is and she isn't. I think it doesn't work as well when he feels and perhaps even looks a little bit older than her. And, yeah, I don't know if it's because Amari is so singular as a performer that they found that initial basis difficult to replicate. What I enjoy about Baker in the role is he's very animated, he's very expressive. He is putting in a lot of unique new characterization, especially in those early flirtation scenes with Sally when he answers the phone at the club and they are having this conversation and she's first becoming intrigued by him with the shift in the second act. He then heads in this very frustrated, even aggressive direction. By the end of the thing, there have been a lot of Cliffs that never get all the way towards real moments of almost violence. But his absolutely can by the end, because he is a very sort of emotionally volatile interpretation of the character, which can work. Which can work really well. I do still think that there is something about Cliff in this production that I'm never really going to resonate all the way with. I've heard that from a few other people as well. It's not a version of the show where Cliff is ever really going to be able to shine. And it's probably because the MC has been uplifted and Sally has been uplifted slightly to the detriment of the Clifford Bradshaws. Now, another new cast member that we absolutely have to talk about is Ruthie Henshaw, dame of musical theatre. Ruthie Henschel, icon of the West End and Broadway stage. If you do not know Ruthie Henschel, you absolutely need to. And I was about to describe her as like a later generation Gwen Verdon or Anne Reinking or the British answer to BB Neweth. But the truth is that she's had a more varied career than any of the above, because not only has she Done a lot of those triple threat dancy roles. And she was well known for her performances in Chicago and shows like Crazy for you, as well as putting it together on Broadway. But also very celebrated for playing roles like Fantine. She was fantine in the 10th anniversary concert of Les Miserables. For some people. Still one of the most iconic Fantines to have sung I Dreamed a Dream. So she really has straddled many different areas of the industry in many different types of roles. And having now made the jump to older roles, she's probably still at the younger end of actresses who could believably play Fraulein Schneider, a character who repeatedly talks about how old and ancient she is. She reminds us in this what an incredibly fantastic actress she is. And with a Kander and EBB scored show with something that, you know, Fosse directed the film, film, it's still, you know, it's very serious. And Rebecca Frecknell's production is very different, but it's still tangential to that real classic Broadway world. This is material. This is a tone that she well understands. And it just makes sense in her voice. I don't even mean when she's singing, just when she is saying these words of dialogue. She just understands the poetry of them and the music of them and the rhythm of them. There are few real old school leading ladies like Ruthie Henry that could deliver a performance like this today. She is remarkable and up there with the best Fraulein Schneiders that I've ever seen. And that is before she gets to start singing because she is always and go and listen to recordings. Back in the day, she had one of those voices. I'm thinking of Marin Maisie as another one that had this beautiful lyrical high soprano. And then also old school, brassy Broadway style belting. The voice shifts a little bit later in life. This is the best I've heard her sound in a long time because she can just sing this score with abandon and pour into it like this sense of frustration. And she becomes one of the angriest Schneiders that I have ever heard because they get this huge moment and it's a great combination of set and lighting and direction in the second of the two big songs that she sings in the show when she sings what would you do in the second act? And she is grappling with a impossible personal decision in the face of political shift. And she is condemning the idea that she should simply be brave and follow love and be reckless the way that the young people around her are advising her. And so she sings this song, she rises up in this moment of focused, glowing light, and she lets out this extraordinary growling scream of a belt, this long held note, which Ruthie does such a great job of, and she takes it to this angry place. And often, even perhaps with Liza Sadovi's originating performance in this revival, it comes more from real terror. But Ruthie is. Ruthie is peed off. Ruthie is resentful of the corner that she has been pushed into because she's a very feisty Schneider throughout. She is clicking her fingers, she is telling Cliff what to do, she is telling Herr Schultz what to do. She is having no nonsense from Frulein Cost. All of that characterization absolutely works. And it ultimately boils together in this thrilling moment of theatre. Robert Hands shares many scenes with her. New to the cast as Hair. Schultz, like many of the best before him, brings a real sensitivity to the material. Moments of comic charm in the beginning, beginning. And one of my favorite moments of his, something that I hadn't really seen done before in the same way, was actually a silent one. And towards the very beginning of the second act, the two of them have a conversation in which she expresses to him fears that she now has after realizing the implications of the two of them marrying at this exact moment in history. He tries to reassure her and then they. There is an attack of brickers thrown through the window of his fruit market on the Nolendorf Platz, shattering it. And that is represented on stage by the smashing of a glass. The MC folds it into a handkerchief and then stamps on it, which is a feature of the Jewish wedding ceremony, which is here contorted and inverted to represent something significantly darker, invoking the idea of a lot of other attacks that were happening around that time. Time. And after this always harrowing, always impactful moment of the show, Frolein Schneider basically scarpers and Herr Schultz for the first time sees the MC who has been sort of silently observing the scene and is staring back at him in this horrifying Pierrot clown get up. And actually, I lied earlier when I said I didn't make any new discoveries this time, because when I saw how Robert had Hands played this as Schulz, it kind of crystallized in my mind that this is Herr Schultz, who in his dialogue up to this point has been ignoring the coming problems and the reality down the line of the potential Nazi government. And he is now seeing the ugly reality of that for the first time. He is now in this moment looking at the country as it now is and realizing that about it he has so many lines, even later in the show when he says, I know everything's going to be. Be fine because I know the Germans, I know the German people. And he has such faith in that. But in that moment he sees the MC who represents where Germany is at that exact point. And he is horrified by it. And often Schulz's will just meet the gays and see it and then move back out of fear. They're sort of startled by it and then they flee. And he does this thing where he walks away and he almost still refuses to believe it, but. But then he looks back in despair a couple of times. Even it was a little more prolonged than usual. It was desperately painful and very thoughtfully played. And I understood absolutely what this scene was telling us about him really sorrowfully refusing to believe what it was that he was seeing and witnessing with this act of violence, about the shifting mood of the nation. I should also say, as we talk about new performers to the company, there are some very talented additions among the ensemble and the Kick Cat Club dancers. And I don't know if I am meant to point out, I think it's meant to be a secret who is in the monkey? You can sort of gather based on tracks and based on who it would make sense to be the performer who is in the monkey. They know that I know who they are because I could actually, for the first time I could tell that this was that performer. I was like, I know who's in that monkey tonight. The most fun I have ever seen anyone having in that presumably quite uncomfortable and very warm monkey costume. So, so funny. Startling audience members doing silly little jokes with the price at the end, that this is the first time that we've got to the end of that number and with a British audience. I have thought because we've been laughing so much more and really guffawing at this number. There could be a laugh now after the final line. And it's been reported that that final line, she wouldn't look Jewish at all. Which I'm not going to talk about the entire meaning of the song because we'll be here all day. That had uncomfortably been drawing some. Some laughs on Broadway with performers having to interject an ad lib in order to tell people that they shouldn't be laughing at that part. Adam Lambert, I think, was the first on Broadway it was reported to say, this is not meant to be funny. Pay attention. Because it's one of the moments when the show really reckons with rising anti Semitism. But there was a little Bit of a chuckle, a little simmering of laughter after that line last week at the gala night. And it's not something that I had heard, I don't think ever before in the London production. Which isn't to say that it hasn't happened. It's just not something that I had witnessed. And I don't know to what extent that is the song leading into it drawing laughs or, you know, a troubling indictment on where we are right now as a society. Lukas Koch is also new, I believe, as Ernst Ludwig, an initial acquaintance turned friend of Clifford as he is arriving to Berlin, who puts him in touch with Fraulein Schneider and who goes to him for English lessons, and who for the majority of the first act is this charming comic presence who has a big character shift when we learn some difficult realities about him and his political inclinations in Berlin in the 1930s. I don't have to say the words on here for you to know what I am talking about. Even Oblazada and Reeve Carney are doomed to forever be in shows that have like one huge gasp moment. Because if it's not the Orpheus gasp in Hades town, it's this moment in Cabaret when he takes off a jacket and reveals an armband, a very specific one, bearing a very specific insignia. And there's something about his Ernst and the way that he plays his final scene with Cliff, where he's still a little baffled around the notion that Cliff has any kind of an issue with his political stance, that does feel unnecessarily so, though a little juvenile and a little unintelligent, it doesn't seem like he is a member of that party because of utter understanding of it. He feels a little bit more foolishly complicit in a vague understanding of the message. Someone who has been taken in by the notion of, like, being the builders of the new Germany and who has certainly been won over by the hate campaign campaign that goes along with that and the anti Semitism and the scapegoating of entire communities. But there is a very foolish quality that he adds there. I also don't think it's as homoerotic and Ernst Ludwig as we have experienced with a couple of other performers. Because there are moments, there are like two fleeting moments, but like intense ones between him and Cliff in this production. And I'm always so curious about which actors choose to lean into that and which which don't. Because it could also be that, you know, he represents a member of one marginalized community that in spite of himself is still participating in a party that continues to oppress others and oppress his own even. In other words, if this is to be a cabaret that holds up a mirror to current society, Ernst Ludwig is the gay Republican. On which note, I think that is probably everything that I need to tell you about the current principal cast of Cabaret in the West End. Jessica Curtin continues as Fraulein Cost from previous casts. She remains fantastic. Everybody on that stage is doing brilliant work. Like I said, probably the strongest company that the show has had since its earliest days in the West End. There has never been a better time to go back and see Castle cabaret at the KitKat Club in the West End and you might see me there because I don't know if I am content with seeing this combination of performers just once before they bring in a new pair to play Sally Bowles and the MC in just a couple of months. We never get long enough with the stars here in London. The turnover is so fast, but it does mean that I will probably be back at a gala before too long. I need to buy some new clothes that don't make me look like a boy Scout and you can expect to hear my thoughts when that happens about the next celebrity bowls and mc. Surely at this point, Cabaret is the show that I have spoken about here on YouTube more than any other musical that I have seen. Hopefully that is enjoyable to you. If this is the first time you're hearing me talk about it, then there are plenty of other installments and reflections and reviews that you can go and take a listen to right now. Make sure you're subscribed on YouTube and turn on notifications so you don't miss any upcoming videos or thoughts that I might be sharing or follow. Follow me on podcast platforms. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening to my thoughts once more about Cabaret. And if you haven't already, please feel free to share all of yours in the comments section down below. What specific things did you take from these very exciting new performances? As always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Micky Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey day. Subscribe Acast Powers the World's Best Podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend hey.
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