← MickeyJoTheatre
MickeyJoTheatre
Orville Peck and Eva Noblezada in Cabaret | Mickey-Jo's thoughts on the new Broadway revival stars
00:27:32
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Mickey Jo
I will say immediately I have never seen a Broadway audience go as nuts for this particular revival of Cabaret as they did last week. Villecoment Bienvenue oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre and I am a little bit obsessed with this particular revival of the Kander and EBB musical Cabaret based on the play I Am A Camera based on the book Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood. This revival was first seen in the West End in 2021. It's directed by Rebecca Frecknell. It originally starred Eddie Redmayne as the MC who helped to develop this production with Jesse Buckley originally co starring as Sally Bowles. Nearly four years later it continues to play at the KitKat Club at the Playhouse Theatre in the West End, this production being a semi immersive restaging of the show that has transformed the entire theatre into the Kit Kat club of the 1930s. In spring of last year, meanwhile, the production made its way stateside with a Broadway transfer also led by Eddie Redmayne, this time joined by Rankin as Sally Bowles, opening at the KitKat Club at the August Wilson Theatre where it continues to play. A couple of cast changes later, I recently made my third visit to the show, having seen the original Broadway cast, having then gone back to see the new MC Adam Lambert. I have now returned recently to see the new leads, Orville Peck and Eva Noblazada. We're going to be talking about both of their performances today as well as the rest of the supporting cast, some of them the same from the show's opening, some of them new and having now seen this revival I think 12 times, having seen the musical Cab Beret a couple more times in separate productions, I'm really enjoying getting to go and see it with different performances and really dig into the little differences in their interpretations, especially when the characterizations are so different as one of these performers was. So let's talk about it then. How were Orville and Eva in Cabaret? But just before we do, if you have also had the opportunity to see these performers already on Broadway in Cabaret, let us all know what you thought about their performances in the comment section down below. And if you enjoy my thoughts on this and you would like to stay up to date with all of my Broadway and West End reviews, then make sure you are subscribed to me right here on my theatre themed YouTube channel or following on podcast platforms. In the meantime, I'm very excited to share my thoughts with you about the new stars of Broadway's Cabaret. So firstly, I'm just really excited that they are continuing to run this production. It was not received as enthusiastically on Broadway as it had been in the West End. It didn't seem like it was going to be as financially prosperous, largely because the production is so much more expensive to run over in New York. And it's worth pointing out that with the new cast changes, they have simultaneously minimized a little bit of the pre show experience. The theater and its various bar spaces and various different rooms still looks absolutely stunning. I would still recommend getting there at least 30 minutes before the scheduled performance time. You still have that cool entrance via the stage door where it feels more like you're going into a sort of a dark nightclub rather than the traditional Broadway experience. But they no longer offer you free shots on arrival. I heard that this was costing $60,000, which seems insane. And they have also reduced the number of performers in the prologue company which are separate to the main cast of the show. This is a company of musicians and dancers, performers who perform throughout the theater's spaces prior to the start of the show. And if you haven't been to see the production before, I don't know that you'll necessarily notice that this has been scaled back, but it's definitely smaller. But I remain a really big fan of this production. You can go and listen to my reviews both of the original West End opening and of the Broadway opening. And I think it's great to see new life breathed into the production and new audiences brought to it as well by the exciting replacement casting. So let's talk first of all about Orville Peck as the mc. Now, the MC is a difficult role to get right. I think I've had more objections to MC performances in this revival than I have to Sally's. Traditionally, there is a lot of it that rests on the shoulders of the mc. The material having been built that way. It opens with the MC appearing and introducing the cabaret nightclub and its performers to the audience and really commanding them and welcoming them and hosting the whole thing. There is this instant shattering of the fourth wall, but the MC also goes on to be emblematic of the decline of Germany in the 1930s, leading up to Nazi control, leading up to the events of the Second World War. The MC is an indicator of that tonally, especially in this production. There's a lot in terms of the costuming, in terms of the aesthetic that also suggests. That suggests the way that the country heading and the challenge is conveying all of that emotionally without the benefit of extended book scenes. Because after that initial moment, for the most part, whenever we encounter the mc, there is very little dialogue to accompany their presence on stage. They are just singing these songs that are either spoofing and poking fun at society at the time or commenting on its issues. Very impressive, then, that Orville Peck, who has a theatrical background but is largely known as a popular country singer, has managed to become one of my favorite M mc's of all time. And with a performance that I would describe as wildly non traditional, I think he makes some of the boldest choices of any of the 10 or so MCs that I've seen specifically in this production. I still do think that Eddie Redmayne, who I saw do this on either side of the Atlantic, remained the strongest MC for this version of the show. For Rebecca Frecknell's direction, he helped to shape it. It was built around him. That all makes sense. But Orville not only has a really evident love of the role and of the material and brings a reflective to it, makes such bold choices in terms of the characterization. There is a real assertiveness to it, a masculinity to it, a sort of a dominance, especially in those opening scenes. The way that he greets the audience, there is such a smirk of I know exactly what you're here for and I'm going to deliver it to you. It's sort of sexy and it's sort of wild, and it's a world away from the sort of a creepy marionette thing that Eddie Redmayne was doing. As this contorted, slightly otherworldly creature. Orville feels a little more akin to someone like a Harold Zidler in Moulin Rouge, who at all times has this smile, but the smile betrays something a little more sinister, but a sort of a playful and a suggestive sinister as well. There is another KitKat Club character called Hans, who we barely really hear from in the show. But Orville's MC feels, in characterization, a little closer to Hans. If the MC was sick one day and Hans had to take over being the master of ceremonies now, the big already answered and perhaps fatigue question here is will Orville Peck, who is always seen wearing a mask over his eyes like the Phantom of the Opera, whether he's performing or whether he's doing press, will he wear it as the MC in Cabaret? And the answer is no, for 99% of the time he wears it during the curtain call. Both, I think, because it's a Little hard to stop people filming or photographing the curtain call. Like, if they're in the middle of a section, if they're in the middle of an aisle, those ushers are doing their best to stop it happening. You are meant to have your phones covered with stickers so you don't take any photos or videos once you are inside the August Wilson, the. The KitKat club for this production. But as we know, some people manage to anyway. I also think, and especially for me, who does not know Orville Peck's work previously, he's very unrecognizable as the mc. And if people are buying tickets based on enjoying him, then there is a moment in the curtain call when he comes back out wearing the mask that he's more familiar. And you can go, oh, yeah, there he is. And I think that's important as well. Also, there is a sense of, like, the character having been shed away and coming out as yourself, which for him means wearing the mask. But he does not wear it at any point throughout the two acts that actually make up the narrative. And for what it's worth, I think he actually could have done. I think there's something interesting they could have done with him wearing some different masks, some stylized masks. He's certainly wearing very, like, contrived makeup. There was a lot of discussion online about, like, he's not really playing the character and, like, being true to the vulnerability. And the MC has never been, like, an authentically human character. It's always been a very contrived one in terms of the characterization, in terms of the personality and the aesthetic. But there is a moment where there's, like, a wig discarded. When tomorrow belongs to me, this fascist anthem is heard for the first time. I think there could have been a mask removal at that point that would have been quite powerful. But I'm happy that he wants to just throw himself more traditionally into this show and the way that it historically works. We have seen variation in terms of the aesthetic different MCs have had upon their own request. I chatted to Mason Alexander park about this recently, so I think there was scope for it. But Orville really seems to be, as an actor, wanting to do this the right way and the real way now. I actually had no idea until very recently about Orville's theatrical background that he had trained at Lambda here in the uk or that he had been in Peter Pan Goes Wrong in the West End at one point. This, obviously before he became the Orville Peck that he is now known as. But the acting is sublime. The singing is so. So utterly theatrical. You would not think that this is someone from the pop world. The vibrato and the tone and the power, everything is there, absolutely everything you need for a really thrilling vocal. One of the best MC vocals that I have heard. No one quite sings anything like Adam Lambert, but this sounds just utterly theatrical. Utterly ready for Broadway. I think, for what it's worth, there are more roles that Orville Peck could do on Broadway if he decided that he's having a nice time and wants to stick around. But having recently seen Billy Porter do it in the uk, who achieved some very powerful moments, particularly into the second act, but who perhaps struggled a little bit more with the, you know, the initial intensity of that opening number and that moment of, like, crawling around on the floor between the legs of all of these performers. Orville Peck shone in this moment, had utter mastery of it, utter control. When you're arriving as a new cast member to an existing ensemble and, you know, you haven't had as much theatrical experience, sometimes it can tell on stage pretty easily. We can see that with what we would call stunt casting. He is in such utter control of every single moment in this production as all the best MCs are. And it puts the power balance exactly back where it needs to be. It allows all of the Sally and Cliff stuff to be played separately in its own context, and it allows the MC to feel like the arbiter of everything happening in the show, which is how it was conceived with Eddie Redmayne. It doesn't always happen with every single casting choice that we've seen in the show, but it's happening right now on Broadway because Orville is so strong in terms of ad libs, because Adam Lambert had added a lot and Billy Porter is adding a couple right now in the West End. There are only a couple of different jokes. There seems to be a different punchline about Fritzi every single time I see the show. Now. I don't know if this is something where they just get every MC to choose their own adventure, but it was this very grunting, deliciously seedy, charismatic delivery that instantly won me over to Orville. In those moments. He's just great. Talk about one of the most impactful moments he has. That is a bit of a spoiler for multiple things in this production and with the material, obviously. But before that, I want to touch on the song, if they could see her in the second act, because this got a little bit of attention for how it was being received by Broadway audiences when Adam Lambert was playing the role. There were reports of on multiple occasions audience members laughing at the final line. The concept of the song being that the MC is dancing with a gorilla and singing a love song about the gorilla with the bl. Final line being if they could see her through my eyes, she wouldn't look Jewish at all. It's a commentary on the scene that has just unfolded between Fraulein Schneider, who is not Jewish, and Herr Schultz, who is. Who were planning to marry but whose wedding party was soured by the reveal of one of their guests being a Nazi and expressing his concerns to Frulein Schneider, who was a friend of his, that this marriage was not advisable. Now when audience members started laughing at that final line in the song, if they could see her, Adam Lambert was adding an additional line of dialogue where he says, this is not a comedy. Pay attention and sort of scolding them necessarily, but very intensely for receiving it in the wrong way, either foolishly or deliberately, which is very sinister. And that obviously incredibly close to home for Adam Lambert, who is Jewish. There was some question about whether this would continue with Orville Peck. And you know, it's still early days, so we will see. But I think for what it's worth, the way that Orville is delivering this line, it has such a darkness to it and I think there's something around where you pause and which word you really choose to spit out that it feels impossible. It feels utterly impossible to be anything other than stunned into horrifying silence in that moment. But some audience members will surprise you. I think, for what it's worth, it doesn't seem likely to me that it's going to get a laugh response. It didn't when I saw the show. Otherwise the audience response was. Was extraordinary. I think for a handful of reasons, some of which I'll talk about later. This is perhaps the most Broadway ready version of Cabaret that tonally feels not dissimilar to the well remembered Sam Mendes revival that was led by Alan Cumming and a handful of other stars in recent years. It feels like the kind of cabaret that Broadway is expecting with a little bit more of a pre show to it that has just tonally moved a little bit more towards where New York audiences are in very subtle ways. Interestingly enough, it was also spring break. I think there were a lot of younger audience members there who didn't know the show because the reactions to some of its revelations were real gasps of shock, which is always a fun thing to experience, especially for me, who has now seen the show upwards of 12 times. Now, here's the really interesting choice that Orville and Eva made together in the second act. And I don't believe that every subsequent pair of leads, especially over on Broadway, are directed by the show's original director, Rebecca Frecknell. With ongoing long running productions. You have associate directors, you have resident directors, assistant directors who rehearse it, new members of the company. And there has been some flexibility with some parts of staging, some choices, some moments particularly of passion, particularly of coming together. There is an almost strike that happens by Cliff to Sally and that has been played in different ways, like the suddenness of it, the way that it stopped and the way that it then melts into this sort of a sorrowful embrace that's been done a handful of different ways. So has Sally's physicality when singing the song Cabaret towards the end of the show. And so has particular moment between Sally and the mc. This comes at the climax of the song I don't Care much, which is a real highlight for the MC in this production. Beautifully sung by Orville Peck in this sort of creepy, dissociative kind of a way. It coincides with him appearing in a very plain and traditional outfit. He's wearing a three piece gray business suit. He has a very smartly styled blonde wig on his head, appearing very much like the fascist ideal of a man at that time. A very big departure from the bold and extravagant and increasingly creepy costuming that we've seen him wearing throughout the first act and early into the second. But when he sings if you kiss me, if we touch for the last time in the song, there's normally some sort of a physical moment between him and Sally. I think originally this was played as him sort of grabbing her wrist and it gets quite intense and she is taken aback by this. This time around, she, like approaches him from behind, he turns around, recalls at the sight of her, and then the two of them embrace sorrowfully and hug, which I have never seen before from any other pairing of leads not played as emotionally at least. And it's interesting because this speaks to who the MC is and what the MC represents for this production. And I think Orville's mc, more so than perhaps any of the previous ones, feels like a real person who is not just an indication of the mood of the country or the city of Berlin or the queer community. And the MC in this revival of Cabaret has never felt like an explicitly queer character. I mean, some interpretations more so than others, but that doesn't feel like a purpose and an identity tethered to the character as much as it has in previous productions. I've always thought that he's sort of representative of the country and that that gets hammered home at the end when he plays the train conductor and personally asks Cliff or not, he found the city in the country beautiful as he bids him farewell as Cliff returns to America. But in this moment, when the MC and Sally see each other and she's put on this oversized gray suit as well, and they embrace, it feels like this is literally Sally returning to the club and the MC seeing her there and that this is what he has been reduced to and that the KitKat club itself is also being affected by the change in society, by the shifts towards fascism, that they are no longer able to express themselves in an authentic and queer and creative way, that it's becoming just as policed as the rest of Germany. And so Sally and the MC both conforming to that embrace in the sorrow of it all. And I've never really thought about that with that particular moment before. There have been previous interpretations where it seemed like perhaps the MC is representative of the doctor administering her abortion, or even like the concept of fascism itself or the country itself. But having the two of them see each other and then hug allows the MC to be much more human than we sometimes see in this production, which I think is a really interesting and affecting choice. Now let's move on and talk about Eva Noblezada as Sally Bowles. Eva, recently known for originating the role of Eurydice in the Tony Award winning musical Hadestown. She was also seen as Kim in the recent West End and Broadway revival of the musical Miss Saigon. And she recently originally originated the role of Daisy Buchanan in the Broadway musical adaptation of the Great Gatsby. Sally Bowles has some kinship to each of those in a way, because she is a survivor. She is a young woman finding her own path through the world in a foreign country and, you know, experiencing adversity. There's a little bit of Kim in that, there's a little bit of urinary in that, but the way that she navigates it is a little bit more Daisy Buchanan because she laughs off all of her strife and she has this very happy go lucky the attitude as she moves between the beds of various men in order to get by. And we very rarely see any sense of the toll that that takes on her. We see a glimpse of it and maybe this time where it becomes clear to us that she's perhaps a little more heartbroken than she's been letting on, but really we see it in her torturous performance of Cabaret towards the end of the show, where she really squares up to the reality of, you know, acknowledging that the country may be headed for turmoil, that her circumstances may be desperately bleak, but that she is going to go down swinging, that she is going to live life to the fullest, even if that means the party may not last for that much longer. And that's something I felt really acutely from Eva, especially in that cabaret performance, which was very powerful, is her knowingness, the sense that she really does understand everything that's happening here, here, but she is not going to flee from it, she is going to stay there and she's going to continue in this reckless, perhaps hedonistic lifestyle regardless. Overall, I really enjoyed Eva's Sally. I wouldn't say it felt quite as groundbreaking. She reminded me in many ways of Amylou Wood's performance in the West End, I think, because they both felt like very young Sally's and the naivety came from that place of youth and innocence rather than a young woman who really ought to know better. But she had that familiar, feisty spirit in her performances of Tell Mama and Mine Hair that I knew she would be great at. In terms of the vocals, of course, she sounds fantastic. She has one of the clearest vocal tones and one of the most effortlessly powerful belts that we are hearing in musical theatre right now. I think she has one of the most stunning voices. It's always interesting for Sally Bowles, who does have that kind of a voice, because you hear them kind of sing down a little bit rather than giving the most stunning, sensational, polished and like traditionally theatrical vocal. And so you hear that from evil a little bit, where it's a little bit more between a song and a shouted delivery at times very consciously. Strangely, I actually think that some of her vocals might be more powerful if they were a couple of keys higher. I think her real money notes sit a little above the score of Cabaret and the height of maybe this time in the height of Cabaret only begins to approach her highest and most effective belting range. The notes that she's hitting in I'd Give My life for you and in Flowers and in her final song in the Great Gatsby. It's in that highest part of her range that her real money notes are. So she doesn't find quite the same jaw dropping power in this score because of where it sits. British accent I thought was pretty tremendous. There was one vowel that came around a couple of times, but it didn't really cause me a big problem. And it's far better than a lot of other American attempts at British accents that I have heard, even in this role. I think hers is a Sally Bowles that really shines in moments of fragility and vulnerability, which is often where we've seen even excel in really letting us in to that sense of heartbreak. But you can also see her empathy for other characters, both for Cliff, with whom she shares most of her scenes, but also with Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz at the party and in the aftermath. Now, speaking of Schneider and Schulz, I do want to share a few thoughts about the wider supporting cast. Steven Skybell has been in the show since it opened on Broadway. He has always been a top t Herr Schultz. He is wonderful. He is charming. He is woundingly affecting at the end of the piece. It's really devastating the way that he delivers that dialogue with a sort of a heartbreaking lack of foresight, the way that he reacts to being able to see the MC after this sort of a Kristallnacht suggestion when a brick is thrown through his shop window. But also so charmingly comedic in every moment that he has in the first act, which feels even more dialed up here. He feels. Feels funnier, he feels wilder. He is milking a lot of comedy opportunities. When he has the line to Ernst Ludwig at the party, when he says, you will have to introduce yourself to all these girls because I do not know their names. He repeats the line, I do not know their names, through fits of laughter. It's hysterically funny. We grow so endeared to him, which is so important for everything that is going to happen. And I think it's also impacted by who he's playing opposite. I loved Bibi Newirth in this role. I think she really makes sense for Rebecca Frecknell's vision for it. I think she was quite similar to some of the Schneiders that we've had in the West End. I think Ellen Harvey moves more towards how the role was played in the Sam Mendes version, but I think that does good things for the show and good things for this relationship, because Bebe was really playing again, fragility, vulnerability, and an older woman who is. Is desperate and who is concerned and who is not as confident or optimistic about the way that things are going. And Ellen Harvey projects a great deal more confidence, which manifests as these very sassy exchanges with Fraulein Cost. And she nails every single punchline of those exchanges, some of which get lost in this production sometimes because it's not a laugh. A minute show. But she has some really great zingers. When Cost shows up at the engagement party uninvited and she says, it's my fault. I did not invite you, but only because I know that you work in the evening evenings. That's a great line because she's referencing her secret career as a prostitute that they both know about a profession which makes Fraulein Schneider endlessly fatigued as there is a parade of sailors always coming and going from Fraulein Cost's room. But also there is another one when she says, just last week I brought you another new mattress that so rarely gets a laugh, even though it is another reference to exactly the same thing. Ellen Harvey finds every single one of those laughs. And she should. She has done plenty of comedy. She was seen just recently off Broadway in the very funny show Dracula, a comedy of terrors in which she played these broad com caricatures. It doesn't inhibit her from being able to play the sorrow of the second act, but she does it like a woman standing in her own convictions. She has made the choice to dissolve this engagement in the name of her own self preservation. She has made a difficult decision. But this production of Cabaret speaks profoundly to how people make decisions living under such circumstances. The haunting final victim visual is not invoking the Holocaust as some previous productions have. It's invoking assimilation and staying on the carousel and being a part of that community and that country under totalitarian regimes. As America and many other countries around the world experience eerie parallels with dark chapters of history, we ask the question, how did people possibly withstand this? How did people possibly allow this to happen? Happen? Cabaret poses a suggestion and Ellen Harvey and Steven Skybell opposite each other is very much one of the ways in which I think the production has shifted slightly more to the benefit of a Broadway audience. Because I think it's really important that you raucously applaud Schneider and Schulz running off together to go and bang. Basically. I remember seeing this in London and that audience was thrilled that this older couple was gonna go and have a passionate time together. They were whooping and cheering. And this last week was the most enthusiastic I have ever seen a Broadway audience for that moment. And I think it's because of the slight difference in the way that Ellen Harvey plays Schneider. I think this is what the Schneider and Schultz need to look like here for the audience to root for them. That hard to be that enthusiastic about that happening. Anyway, those have been some more of my thoughts about Cabaret. I've made many more of these talking about previous pairings. If you want to hear a little bit more about this production, they very often highlight different parts of this very, very rich material and this very rich creativity from director Rebecca Frecknell. So feel free to go and check out all of those as well as my original reviews of both the Broadway and West End productions. In the meantime, I would love to also know what you thought. Let us know in the comments section down below if you have seen Orville Peck and even Orbizada on Broadway in Cabaret. What did you think? Thank you so much for listening to this. I hope that you enjoyed if you did, make sure that you are subscribed right here on YouTube or following me on podcast platforms for Broadway reviews and West End reviews coming very soon. Soon. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.