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What's wrong with Eddie Redmayne in CABARET? | About the response to his performance as the Emcee
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Micky Jo
Ow. Jesus. Do you know what Eddie Redmayne doesn't need to do is make his own drum roll sound effects. Thanks. For what? Oh, my God. Hey, Vilkomen, Bienvenue. Welcome to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Micky Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. An obsession that I endeavor to channel through my work as a professional theatre critic here on social media, but one that also occasionally drives me to mind boggling frustration. And I am sitting here today wearing a party hat because if I read one more hot take about Eddie Redmayne's performance and characterization of the MC in Cabaret or what that character is meant to represent within the context of the show, without any kind of acknowledgement of the fact that what they're judging is a Tony Awards clip taken out of context or that, you know, they haven't actually seen the entire performance in the context of the show, I'm going to lose my entire mind. Or for those that have seen the show, an acknowledgement that art and by extension theatre, and by extension music, musical theatre, and this particular production of Cabaret is inherently subjective. I've loved theatre my entire life and I spent long enough teaching mathematics to know the difference. One of those things usually has right answers and the other one doesn't. Which means that your interpretation of what the MC represents within Cabaret is completely valid. But Rebecca Fregnall's interpretation of what the MC represents within Cabaret is also valid. Eddie Redmayne as a performer, his interpretation of what the MC represents in Cabaret within that material is also valid. So is mine. So is everyone else's. Which also implies that everyone is allowed to have an opinion on this topic. However, there is a difference between an opinion which is informed and an opinion which is not. And I don't mean educated and I don't mean that. You know, you're only allowed to talk about this if you've seen the show because there is an inherent sort of a restriction within that there is an inherent price factor. This, of course, gives way to a wider conversation about the accessibility and affordability of Broadway and theatre and the West End. But I do think that it's a great idea for us to use enough of our vocabulary to articulate that, you know, I'm talking about the Tony Awards clip here and I haven't actually seen the show anyway. All of this frustration and mounting noise on social media made me want to really dive into this performance and talk about how it's been perceived, because there was a significant difference between how Eddie Redmayne's performance And the entire production really was revived when it first opened in London and then subsequently when it transferred to Broadway. He won the Olivier Award for Best Actor in a musical in the uk he did not win the Tony. So while social media ties itself in knots on whether or not they think Eddie Redmayne is good in this show, we are going to take a very forensic look at everything that's happened so far with this revival and with the history of this character as well. We're going to talk briefly about previous interpretations, we're going to talk about how the character is situated within this particular revival of the show. And like I said, we're going to look at how Eddie Redmayne has been reviewed throughout the production's history. Along the way, we will stop off on such conversational topics as what happens when we view the MC as a queer character and is that a component of this particular production and Eddie Redmayne's performance? We're also going to ask such broad questions as what actually is a performance and is it the responsibility of just one individual, I. E. The actor? Spoiler alert. It's not. So if you're looking for a needlessly extensive deep dive video essay about Eddie Redmayne's performance in Cabaret, as well as a larger instructive video about theatre criticism and art, then you've come to the right place. If you enjoy today's video, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. If this is the first video that you're seeing from me, I make many, many videos about theatre both in the West End and on Broadway, talking about breaking theatrical news, hot takes such as this one, but largely reviewing the shows that I have been invited to go and see, which has included Cabaret many times. In fact, a few days ago I was at the most recent gala performance of this particular production, which continues to run in the West End. And if anyone is interested, then I'm happy to make a video talking about what I think of the new performers in the roles in London today. However, let's talk about Edd Redmayne. But first, let's talk about the history of the MC and the history of Cabaret. Now, I've made so many videos about this particular production that I feel like I've told you this many times. But let me give you a quick overview of the history of this musical and how it first arrived to the stage. So Cabaret first premiered on Broadway in 1966, featuring a book by Joe Masteroff and a score by John Kander and Fred Ebb, who are best Known if not for cabaret than for the musical Chicago. Cabaret is Based on the 1951 play I Am a Camera, which is in turn based on 1939 Christopher Isherwood novel Goodbye to Berlin. As such, the whole thing is semi autobiographical and it follows a protagonist named Cliff, who is an American writer who has traveled across Europe and finds himself en route to Berlin. He is hoping to find some sort of inspiration within the city that will inspire his next book. Before he has arrived in Berlin, however, the KitKat club has already been recommended to him as the hottest spot in the city, and when he attends, he meets its singer, Sally Bowles. Sally is a British girl living something of a naive, hedonistic lifestyle. But she is not the only personality that he meets within the KitKat club setting, because, as he tells us in the play's final moments, there was a nightclub in a city called Berlin and there was a master of ceremonies, the mc. Now, the nature of the show's material, structurally, is that we alternate between this narrative in which we see Cliff and Sally living together and trying to get by financially. There is a subplot involving Cliff's landlady, a woman named Fraulein Schneider, and another resident of the rooms that she rents, with whom she has a sort of an ongoing romantic connection. The backdrop to all of this being the changing political climate in 1930s Germany and the rise of Nazism. But like I was saying, this is alternated with musical vignettes that take place within the Kit Kat Club, which are largely performed by the mc. Now, aside from a small handful of the Kit Kat Club dancers, the MC is really the only named character who does not exist outside of this world. He largely does not participate in these book scenes and only exists within the context of the KitKat Club. And we don't get to know that much about him, not nearly as much as we do about these other characters. Each of them have desires and motivations and beliefs and challenges that we come to find out an awful lot about. And we don't get any of that with the mc. He just sings songs. He remains a vivid character, however, who exacts this biting political comedy on the situations that we see unfolding within the book scenes. Performing songs like if you could see her, which is a send up of, you know, the perspective of the community at the time of relationships of non Jews with Jews in 1930s Germany, with anti Semitism on the rise, pre Nazi rule. That particular song takes place in the second act while everything is taking a turn for the slightly more dark and intense in the first act, he sings a more light hearted song called Two Ladies poking fun at Sally and Cliff's. Very novel, very modern at the time, Living Arrangement. Now, when Cabaret first opened, the MC was played by Joel Grey, who subsequently reprised his role in the Bob Fosse directed film version, which starred Liza Minnelli and was heavily different for a handful of reasons. But what's particularly interesting about Joel Grey's performance in the original Broadway production is that he was nominated for and won the Tony Award. But I bet you can't guess which category in. Or maybe you can, because there aren't that many options, but it was Best featured actor in a musical, not leading Actor, which Eddie Redmayne has recently been nominated for. Now why might this be? Well, the exact technicality around this is that a performer is automatically considered leading within a musical if their name is listed above the title. Any performers who are not listed above the title are considered featured. This is then discussed by a Tony Awards committee and they may make rulings and amendments to rectify things that they don't necessarily agree with. But for whatever reason, it was Jack Guilford and Lotta Lenya as Herr Schultz and Fraulein Schneider who were nominated for lead actor and lead actress in a musical in that original production and Joel Gray was nominated in featured. Now, we do see discrepancies in the ways that these roles are interpreted by awarding bodies as either leading or featured changing over time. Also changing between the UK and the us. I'm reminded of a recent example where Sharon D. Clark was considered leading Death of a Salesman here in the UK at the Olivier Awards, and when that same production transferred to Broadway, the role was considered featured, the latter of which I actually agree with. In any case, when Cabaret was revived in 1987 and Joel Gray again reprised his performance at the Drama desks because he wasn't eligible for the Tony Awards because he'd won already for the same role. He was then considered to be a lead actor. And by the time the show was being revived in London at the donmar warehouse in 1993 with Alan Cumming playing the role of the MC, the Oliviers agreed and he was also nominated for lead actor in a musical. But he didn't win, not in the UK anyway. When Alan and the production transferred to Broadway, he also won the Tony, this time for lead. And before we even get into the reviews, there's an immediate parallel. We can see there where Alan Cummings performance won the Tony Award but not the Olivier, Eddie Redmaynes having done the opposite. And it's Worth pointing out, and I've said this before in other videos, that that production had far more cultural impact and staying power in the US than it did in the uk. It ran in a small, what technically feels like an off West End venue, the Donmar Warehouse here in London. For a limited period it was filmed. But this revival, the San Mendes directed revival, had far more of an extensive life in New York. It ran on Broadway. It was subsequently remounted years later with Alan Cumming again reprising his performance. It toured the US and not unlike the ongoing revival of Chicago, it sort of became the way in which Cabaret was seen for many American theater goers. If you were thinking of Cabaret, you were thinking about the aesthetics and the direction choices of this production. So much so that the MC has since been collectively reframed as a queer character. Which, if we go back to the original material, is not necessarily the case. I say not necessarily because as I mentioned before, we don't really get any insight into the MC's own personal choices and political affiliations even, because everything is sort of quite tongue in cheek and playful and nefarious. But a lot is left open to interpretation. The interpretation of a director and the interpretation of a performer. In any case, between those two things, the choice to reframe the MC as a queer character seemed to take place when Alan Cumming took on the role in that Sam Mendes directed production. And from what I can tell, this was largely achieved via three different things, the first being aesthetics and costuming. Alan Cummings MC is dressed in a more suggestive way with kind of like bracers up top but nothing else going on. It's a more risque and visually queer coded interpretation of the character compared with how Joel Grey looked. But the other two choices that this production made occurred at specific moments. The first takes place during the song Two Ladies, in which the two ladies that the MC is performing a playful musical threesome with are played by one female and one male member of the Kit Kat Club ensemble. This, though still a pastiche musical number performed within the context of entertainment in the Kit Kat Club, kind of suggests the bisexuality or the queerness at least of the mc. But if these are considered more tenuous references, there is something much more specific that this production did later on. And this is a spoiler. But it's a spoiler for the Sam Mendes directed version of the show, which is not currently playing anywhere, because the final moments of Cabaret have been realized very differently in different productions, and in this one they chose to make a very visceral statement about the impact of, you know, the Nazis coming to power on many of the show's characters, including the mc, who up until the end of the show hadn't really been existing within the reality of Nazi Germany, only within the concept of the KitKat club. And so at the end of the Sam Mendes production, the MC removes a coat to reveal costuming familiar of the prisoners at Auschwitz, or at the very least, of a Nazi concentration camp. And there are two emblems as seen on this uniform. One of them indicates a gold star that the MC is a Jewish character. The other, a pink triangle, indicates that he was a homosexual. So this makes a very strong and very clear statement about the MC's sexual identity. And this framing has sort of lingered in various other productions that have come afterwards. There is a sense of this in Rufus Norris's revival in London in 2006 that subsequently toured the UK extensively. There are references within that to the MC as a queer character and a similarly blistering final sequence that doesn't do the same sort of explicit things, but also depicts the MC as being a victim of the Nazi regime and specifically of the Holocaust. But what's interesting in all of this is it has kind of seeped into the collective consciousness that I feel we now consider the MC to be an inherently and specific queer character, to the point that I'm seeing people this week making tiktoks talking just as a given about the MC as this queer character that we meet. And that's not necessarily explicit within the material. There is also the consideration that the MC has very often been played by queer performers, which is just another interesting tidbit, whether or not they were publicly queer at the time of playing the role. But for whatever reason, it does seem to skew very heavily. And this is perhaps linked to the fact that it seems to be Alan Cummings performance as the MC that is best remembered. In so many of these conversations I'm seeing unfolding about Eddie Redmayne, there are so many comparisons invoked to Alan Cummings performance, and he did it for a great many years on Broadway, and he reprised the role on Broadway, and it's been captured on film. But it's interesting that the original performer of the role, who also reprised it in a subsequent revival and was in the film adaptation, which is not something that necessarily happens often. The original Broadway star reprising their role on film, dear Evan Hansen notwithstanding, Joel Grey is not more closely linked to the enduring legacy of the MC that people kind of remember, the Alan Cumming version. And I can't imagine that all of these people thinking of Alan Cumming as the MC have all necessarily watched the Donmar Warehouse pro shot. I dare say many have, but there are so many theatre people I'm seeing who just link Alan to it inherently and not Joel. Anyway, this story ends with yet another London revival of Cabaret, this time at the Playhouse Theatre, which is reconceived as the the KitKat club, in a revival that will see the audience arrive through this semi immersive setting with a pre show element performed by a prologue company of performers that situates them within 1930s Berlin inside the Kit Kat Club. From the conception of this production, Eddie Redmayne was always attached as the mc. He opened the show in the West End, he, like I said, won the Olivier Award for Best Leading Actor in a musical. Subsequently, the role has been played by actors including Fra fee and John McCrae and Callum Scott Howells and Jake Shears Mason Alexander park, most recently Leighton Williams, also Luke Treadaway. I think that might be all of them. Sorry if I'm forgetting one. Did I forget an mc? I've seen almost all of them. But on the back of the show's enormous success, a Broadway transfer was announced. It headed to the August Wilson Theatre in New York a few years later where Eddie Redmayne reprised his performance. But as I mentioned at the beginning of this video, the critical receptions to the two have been a little bit different. So let's take a look at the reviews. Now I've done a lot of these review roundup videos before where I haven't really been able to personally weigh in, but with this one I can. And quite specifically because I have now seen this production nine times. I have seen three different productions of Cabaret with my eyeballs in my lifetime across three different countries. I have seen a handful, I think, also nine different actors playing the role of the mc. And I have seen Eddie Redmayne's performance in this show live with my eyeballs. Three different times. I saw the opening night performance of the show in the West End when it was reviewed by the majority of London critics. I saw a subsequent West End performance with Eddie Redmayne in just like a Random Night of the Week. And I saw a Broadway press preview also attended by many New York critics. And I'm not suggesting that my opinion comes with any kind of an inherent superiority. I am just saying I have seen the damn. And I think that's important now. When I first saw it in the West End, I really enjoyed Eddie Redmayne's performance. And you know, I think I Also went into it thinking of the role from the perspective of being a queer character and being a little surprised by his casting. And I don't think I was necessarily that convinced by it before I saw the Thing, but by the time I did see it, I thought it was a masterful acting performance. I thought it was this chameleonic transformation. And it was the exception extent of the characterization of his voice and of his physicality and how transformative the whole thing was and how much he disappeared into this character that really struck me. There is a moment towards the end of the show where he is the MC who has been sort of undergoing a visual transformation throughout the thing and becomes more conservatively dressed and begins to don a blonde wig and sort of, you know, is becoming more a part of the fascist ideal of what Germany would look like, the whole Aryan thing. But he, as the mc, is playing the train conductor on the train that Cliff is taking to leave Germany, having become disillusioned with its political climate and with the people who he has met. And there is a moment where Eddie as the MC went from being the train conductor to going back to being the mc and there was this kind of physical change where he hunched over slightly and his eyes check. It was. It still haunts me enduringly. And it's never been committed to in quite the same way by any of the subsequent performers in the role because they never really transformed as much. There was not as much vocal affectation, there was not as much of an accent, There was not the same extent of physicality. He does a lot of acting in this like it's demonstrable big acting and big characterization. For better or for worse. Let's take a look at the other reviews that are not things said by me. So this was a four star review in the Guardian back when it opened. And let's specifically have a look at what was said about Eddie Redmayne. From the moment we have Vilkommand by Redmayne, it is clear he is in control of his material and electric in his part. As the soiled soul of Boleyn, Redmayne's MC mirrors the movement from light to dark. He has a comically twisted Rumpelstiltskin at the start, uncoiling to a finger resembling the terrible evil fairy or angel of Death. By the end, he gives an immense physicalized performance, both muscular and delicate, from his curled limbs to his tautly expressive fingertips. And such is the praise for this performance that in the final paragraph of this review, Arifa returns to him and Says Redmayne creeps around the fringes of the stage when he is not performing, watching scenes from afar. If this show is sold on his star turn, we get more than our money's worth with his blinding performance in this blinder of a show. And that was how it was thought of at the time that they were selling Eddie Redmayne in cabaret. And the thing has now evolved from a producing perspective where they are selling the show, which they have to because, you know, he left the London production and other people took over and the show continues to run. And they bring in consistently exciting star casting. Currently in the show is Leighton Williams and Rhea Norwood. But there's something Arifa said right at the start of that that I dare say other critics touched on and we may see again. But I want to expand on it a little bit because she characterizes him as the soul of Berlin, the soiled soul of Berlin. And it's that that I believe. And again, my interpretation, Arifa's interpretation of Eddie and Rebecca Frecknell's interpretation, it's that that I think the MC represents in this production of the show. There are versions where the MC is representative of perhaps the queer community, perhaps the queer cultural nightlife. Perhaps the MC is just an individual who is as affected by Nazism as everyone else is in the show. But having seen this multiple times, what I am consistently inferring from the costuming choices and the way that the MC evolves and the way that the MC is utilized within this particular production is that he represents the soul of the country, one that Cliff encounters as being sort of playful and suggestive, but welcoming to him and ry with a little bit of menace to it. That menace becomes more palpable and he becomes less playful, he becomes more traditional, more conservative, and he starts to look like the fascist ideal. And so where we are seeing commentary about his performance being a little bit subhuman, it may be because in this production, he's not really playing individual. He's playing someone emblematic of the entire country. And there's always been something a little bit alien about his performance as well. He is this sort of a creature rather than a person. I want to quickly sidebar about something that one of my friends, Ben, who is Broadway Ben on TikTok, pointed out recently about the evolution of the makeup in the West End version of the show, that subsequent actors who have played the role always wear more and more makeup and that Eddie Redmayne never really wore that much. And while I think largely it has been about personal expression for each actor in the role and it hasn't been more makeup each time. There's just been a trend where we've seen many actors recently who have worn more makeup as the mc. I don't think it's about sexuality. I think it has more to do with gender and alleviating a sense of gender for the mc. Because I think the MC is really more of a creature here and not a man. I don't think the MC is meant to feel like one real tangible male person in this production. I think the more they can do to smooth over the confines of gender expression, the more that that is conveyed. But I don't think that enough of a gender exists. There is a prerequisite through which we can gaze a concept of the MC's sexuality. Not in this production. Not really. Anyway, let's take a look at some more West End reviews. Now this is interesting because this is David Benedict in variety in 2021. He notes at the beginning that revivals of the show ever since Liza's casting in the Oscar winning film have leaned towards being All About Sally. And then with Sam Mendes version, it became all about the MC with Alan Cumming. But he notes that the triumph of director Rebecca Frecknell's stunner of a production is that despite piercing performances from Jessie Buckley and Eddie Redmayne, her supremely intelligent, emotionally draining vision of the show turns it enthrallingly into All About Berlin. Redmayne's highly stylised MC is a cross between a gleaming lean and savage ringmaster and King Lear. It's very definitely a performance with a capital A and a capital P, which goes with what I was saying before about it. Like it's a lot of acting, but it's also utterly at one with the heightened tone of the club. And other than commenting about his sort of political positioning within the show, that's really all that David Benedict has to say about Eddie Redmayne's performance. But the rest of the thing is filled with praise about this revival. Now here is Matt Wolf in the New York Times, but reviewing the London production in 2021, Redmayne's MC brings his own distinctly shape shifting, sinuous quality to a role that can be hard to refresh. Many still associate it with a pancake faced Joel Gray, who originated the part on stage and won an Oscar in the 19701972 Bob Fosse film. Limping or crouching his way about the circular stage, a twitchy Redmane initially calls to mind a demented marionette. His Mouth as misshapen as his psyche. We're gonna come back to that marionette thing. Don't let me forget it. He first emerges in a burst of light, his body contorted during the startling opening number Vilkomen, a party hat clinging to the side of his tilted head. Life is beautiful, he says, but something about the gravelly voice and glazed smile suggest otherwise. Appearing bare chested soon after in the manic number Two Ladies, and the costuming has since changed and he's now kind of portraying Sally, but in a cheaper drag version. Redmayne's MC is a devotee of debauchery whose true character is revealed in the anti Semitic finish to if you could see her when a nasty slur comes as the song's brutal kicker. That I don't necessarily know about, that kind of feels like a slight misunderstanding of what that number represents, because I don't think that's meant to be an inference as to the MC's character or own opinions. I don't think that's the MC's true character. I think that's the MC poking fun at antisemitism existing in the time. Anyway, Redmayne's lyric tenor lends itself well to Tomorrow Belongs to me. I at the time was surprised how great he sounded singing that song, the melodic Nazi anthem that sounds sweet enough until you grasp the lyrics. The song prefigures a moral decline that reaches an idea in the Empire MC's second act solo. I don't care much. With that number cut from the original production but reinstated for various revivals, the MC's assimilation into the Third Reich is complete. So the marionette thing is something that's been talked about a lot recently because it was this Tony Awards performance of Vilkamen where everyone was commenting on firstly that he looked deeply sinister and demonic, right? And then also that he was moving in a very contrived and unusual way. And I don't know if on screen people are just inherently more predisposed to enjoying performances that are naturalistic and believable and sort of conditioned to think that acting is what looks realistic. But the counterpoint to all of this that I've seen being made is people talking about his movement as being this marionette type quality. And true enough, like it comes across, the way that he moves it feels very juddery and it seems as though it is meant to look like he is being puppeteered, like he is is just a pawn in the whole political thing. Right? But even beyond that there's a cleverness to it. And if one good thing came out of this whole annoying Internet discourse, it's that David Gordon from Theatremania pointed out that there is a particular pose Eddie Redmayne is doing at the beginning where he is creating the visual of a swastika with his body, which I, having seen the show a bunch of times, had not picked up on and I think is insane. Insane in like a good I can't believe they're doing that on stage. That's such a ridiculous beautiful detail way, but insane nonetheless. Here's another review. This is five stars in the Independent for that first London opening from Alexandra Pollard. Enter Eddie Redmayne as the mc, an impish mercurial presence who serves as both compare of the cabaret and a sort of all seeing narrator. In the strange and seductive opening number Wilkommen, he promises an escape from the real world, but his gurning presence becomes more disturbing. His song's a metaphor for the darkening soul of Germany as it descends in Nazism. Redmayne is excellent, contorting his sinewy body and singing with a closed throated vibrato and hammed up German accent. Now I could go on and find more of these and there's at least one more that sort of was the most significant dissenting opinion from what I remember of reading the reviews at the time. But what we're hearing in all of them is praise for his physicality and the characterization and the pronounced shift to the more sinister, but also the foreshadowing of the sinister characterization from the beginning, the hint of something behind the eyes, that it's not all quite as happy and willkommen and life is beautiful as he claims. But further to that there is this slight sense of, without using the word, that it might be slightly contrived. They call it a hammed up German accent. David Benedict I think it was called it a performance with a capital P, that the whole thing is a little bit broad. We'll remember that as we cross the pond and look at the New York reviews. But first, the last one I wanted to read. Now this is from Exeunt. Now this was written by Fraequar Hawking and from what I remember was, like I said, the sort of the main dissenting opinion of the time, that this was not a glorious revival of the show, which is an oversimplification of what they said in this review and I encourage you to go and read it for yourself. But we're going to scan through and look for what was said specifically about Eddie Redmayne it's clear that Eddie Redmayne is playing his MC as sinister clown. Even before his immaculate red Pierrot costume, he's the crooked spine of the production. Redmayne habitually hunches over, but straightens up frequently enough to let us know he's not going for a character with a disability, just one who likes to hunch. That did strike me as a little unusual when I first saw it, but I got used to it. This feels like a result both of Redmayne's early attachment to this project and irresistibly of the long shadow of Sam Mendes oft revived 1993 production with Alan Cummings androgynous arch orchestrator of events. Redmayne's performance is more like Joel Grey's original Broadway MC in his sexlessness than Cumming's little squirmer, but without the camp of either. Even when it comes to money, which is not my favourite part of this production, I will say it's chewy and grimacing and unchallenging with a lot of very literal conducting. The angle seems to be consciously playing on the actor's age resistant, slightly haunted doll looks, but feels unsettled rather than unsettled. Now, this is a hot take, I don't think an MC who doesn't read as particularly and a queer slur has been used here in a reclaimed way. But I won't repeat it necessarily does much for Cabaret, even with the character's role embodying of the changing spirit of Boleyn, which is what we talked about. Not when it all feels more circus or freak show themed than Seedy Dive. Why set it in the club at all? Which is a very interesting take and I think that opens a lot of interesting conversations. But I do want to go back to the comparison to Joel Grey, because like I said, that's something I feel like has been missing in a lot of this conversation, that that may be the interpretation of the MC to which this bears more of a similarity than the Alan Cumming one that is closer to the forefront of everyone's minds. For some reason, I say for some reason it makes sense for American audiences because he did a lot on Broadway in the more recent history for international theater fans. I don't know why Alan Cumming more closely associated than Joel Gray still. And it's worth saying, I don't necessarily agree with everything that's written here, but I do think it's a very interesting take on the situation. And in any case, less than three years later, the show opened in New York with Eddie Redmayne reprising his performance. Let's read what the Broadway critics had to say. So let's start with Jesse Green in the New York Times, perhaps the most influential review within the current Broadway community. And he had an awful lot to say about the production. And there did seem to be something of an immediate hang up on the whole retheming of the theatre and the entrance into the building. I think a lot of critics had issues with this production before they'd even arrived to it. Now, after several paragraphs of complaint, he acknowledges that some of the production's many fine and entertaining moments feature its West End star Eddie Redmayne as the macabre MC of the the KitKat Club and quite likely your nightmares foreshadowing the tweet about him being a sleep paralysis demon on the Tony Awards. So you know, Jesse Green called that one. Next talks about Eddie Redmayne a few paragraphs later. Having said the the point of Sally and of Cabaret more generally is to dramatize the danger of disengagement from reality, not to fetishize it. And I don't know if I think that's the point of Cabaret. It's an interpretation of Cabaret, not the point. He goes on to say the guts first problem also distorts Redmane's mc, but at least that character was always intended as allegorical. He is the host to anything, the amoral shapeshifter, becoming whatever he must to get by. Here he begins as a kind of marionette in a leather skirt and tiny party hat. It's actually shorts, it's not a leather skirt. But again, neither here nor there. Hiccuping his way through Vilkomen later, he effectively incarnates himself as a creepy clown, an undead skeleton, Sally's twin and a glossy Nazi, which is a lot of commentary on how he's dressed in the show. But Jesse Green is a theater critic and not a fashion one, so I'm hoping we have more to say about his actual performance. I'm not convinced that we do. I mean, he talks an awful lot about sort of the soul of this production and of the material and how the two sort of don't really align for him. But I don't think much more is said about Eddie Redmayne specifically. Let's see what Variety had to say. Now this was written by Naveen Kumar. Now, both of the publications that we've looked at so far both spoke positively about Eddie Redmayne's performance, albeit under different writers. When the show opened in the West END let's take a read. The stripped down humanity on stage, from the entrails of broken lovers to the dancers. Carnal gyrations make Redmayne's MC a jarring except exception. An otherworldly salamander of a narrator, he hunches over Gollum like gnawing on every syllable as if it were his last meal. It's a fiercely committed performance, but a mannered one too. For the MC to exist as a creature apart makes narrative sense, but Redmayne's remoteness drains some of the force from what is otherwise a grounded gut punching take on a disturbingly timely story. Interesting. Let's go now to Theatomania, which I mentioned before. Now this was reviewed by Zachary Stewart. Redmayne's MC is a fantastic beast, minus the fantastic. He contorts his face, twists his fingers and hunches his back like he's about to ring the bell in the Marianne Kirche. A sweaty, twitchy, animatronic, he makes Alan Cumming look subtle. Where previous MCs seduced you into the party's darkroom before punching you in the gut, Redmane comes out swinging. He's someone you would encounter once and spend the rest of your life actively avoiding. Then also talks about all of the costuming and notes. Fracknald seems to want the MC to represent the soul of Germany, which is a fair enough choice, but she has little to say about why people like Cliff and Sally were attracted to that soul in the first place. I think that Broadway critics didn't find Eddie Redmayne's MC initially charming. And that's a little inexplicable to me because having seen the performance in the West End and on Broadway and it had shifted slightly and I'll tell you more about why in a moment. But I've consistently thought that it's very inviting, it's very welcoming, and it's a little seductive in a very unusual way. But he gets laughs very easily and he charms the audience very easily. And in this whole layout, I mean, they've spent the pre show being seduced into the world of the club. As soon as he arrives, it's this sort of a stark set and it's sort of a tense introduction. There's a prolonged silence and there's an uncomfortable element to it, and there's a tension that he has to break, which he does and gets a laugh for doing so, because that's what happens when you alleviate tension. People laugh in relief. And during that opening monologue section, some of the Dialogue from which is then repeated exactly later and turned on its head with a completely different tone. He is very charming and he does managed to win over the audience. So I'm surprised that that didn't come across with so many of the reviews that we are reading now. I mentioned, I would say, how I thought the performance had changed. And in general, because the August Wilson Theatre is more expansive than the Playhouse Theatre, they've both become the Kit Kat Club in New York and London respectively. For this production, Redmayne's performance is just one of many ways in which the whole thing feels a little bit broader and a little bit bigger. And I think he had the opportunity to play things in a smaller, subtler way. Bear in mind he knows well the difference between playing to a camera and playing to a theatre. He's had experience, plenty of experience of doing both in this larger space. The whole thing is being played bigger now. Let's also take a look at Johnny Oleksinski's thoughts in the New York Post. He gave Cabaret two and a half stars out of of four, which I will say again, as I say every time is a weird metric. It's also basically a three out of five. Why are you still doing it out of four? It's not up to him specifically. It just annoys me. He also took objection to the revival generally and notes that he was also an outlier. Having seen the London production, he says it was rapturously received by critics, except for me. Also that exeunt review that we read. And a little bit of wisdom here perhaps from Mr. Oleksinski, because he said Redmayne's MC is sure to divide opinion. And here we are, sure enough, just as New York audiences will have trouble shaking their love of Sam Mendes ingenious revival that ran on Broadway for years, so too will they struggle to forget Alan Cumming in the role, not to mention Joel Grey in the film. And it's those inherently inescapable performances that I think Eddie Redmayne has had to contend with here. And I think honestly, those go most of the way towards answering the question of why are people struggling with his interpretation of the role so much. But dressed like a demon clown, Redmayne, long and excellent stage actor, makes the part very much his own. He's creepy and has the smiling stalker stare of a horror movie serial killer. And still we're pleased whenever he's around. He got the charming thing. If only he was in a better cabaret. And that's a different conversation for another time about this revival and the different perspectives to it, a lot of which I think can also be answered by the more recent Broadway production directed by Sam Mendes and the love for that. And a perhaps slight reluctance from the critics to let that one go in favour of really being fair to this new interpretation. But again, different conversation. And so I think on balance, what we're still hearing here is a lot of admitted praise being levelled in the direction of Eddie Redmayne. And, you know, he got the Tony Award nomination. His performance was not criticised as heavily as the revival on the Hole was. Director Rebecca Frecknell did not get a Tony nomination among a very competitive year, I will say, for directors in musicals, but for a lot of the difference in critical reception that there's been to the show and to Redmayne's performance, with some reviews sort of framing it in a different way, they are essentially saying very similar things. They're all talking in metaphors and characterizing his performance as being demonic or impish or he's this hunched over figure, this creature. For some, the initial inviting grin works, others don't really see the charm in that, as we've mentioned, I would love for people to really dig into the specificities of his performance because something that I heard a lot just around town in New York was criticism of his singing voice and this slightly strangled quality. I privately heard a theatre critic say that he thought he sounded like Kermit the Frog and found that to be very off putting. And I can hear that, I can. But I also think that for me it invoked the sort of old timey radio voice. And Redmayne himself has said about his slightly contrived German accent that it's sort of non specific European because he invokes more of an idea than a specific personality. And something else I want to talk about here is having seen this production with many different actors subsequently in the West End. Redmayne has yet to be replaced on Broadway, but that will be happening later this year because he's only attached to the revival for a limited time. No one else goes as hard as he does with the characterization. They all portray the same role and they have the same change in costuming and the same general arc. And the production is the same. I don't know how many of the subsequent cast members were actually directed by Rebecca Frecknall personally, but Eddie Redmayne, in terms of the affectations, in terms of the movements and how specifically inhuman he feels, he feels less naturalistic, he feels more contrived. It feels more like a very broad performance than anyone who has come in the role after him. I also think, though some have got incredibly close, in particular Mason Alexander park, who I thought was extraordinary in the show. No one's really lived up to Eddie Redmayne's version of the character, and it was built around him and shaped around him. So that makes sense. But that brings us to the ongoing discourse about his Tony Awards performance, which I will talk about just a little bit now. So there are a lot of things that I think are missing in this conversation, but let me tell you how we got here and what I'm referring to. So Eddie, having been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a musical and the production, having been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, he performed Vilkomen on the Tony Awards, which makes sense because he is still the star of this production. As the production continues in London, they've been doing this dual star thing, and occasionally the Sally is a bigger name, like recently with Cara Delevingne. Occasionally the MC is a bigger name. Certainly right now, with the Broadway opening, Eddie Redmayne is the biggest name, as he was when they opened it in the West End, with him opposite Jesse Buckley. He is now playing opposite Gail Rankin in New York. But given all of that, it made a lot of sense for them to do Vilkomen. What the audience at the Tony Awards, aside from those who had seen the show and the audience at home watching the broadcast, again, aside from those who had seen the show, didn't really get to appreciate, is the context of the entire production. And so, you know, they're trying to understand what this performance is without context. And context is important. It's why I spend so long talking at the start of these videos. Context matters because it tells us where we are, and that is important for understanding any interpretation. The key thing here, and we've said it a lot already, is Eddie Redmayne's MC is acting this way and behaving in this slightly peculiar, slightly sinister manner because of what his character represents within this concept for the show that is dissimilar to concepts that you may have seen in previous productions. That's the thing, and that's the reason why it makes it difficult to comment on the thing without having seen the performance in context. I also want to talk about what a performance is, and this is something I've said before, and I believe staunchly, because a performance is not the creation of an actor. A performance, like almost anything else, like everything else in the world of theatre, is a collaborative act, a performance is a collaboration between, at minimum, actor and director. You also often have to consider vocal coach, acting coach, stage scene partners, dialect coaches, all sorts of other people like the rest of the creative team, all going to this musical, directors, movement coaches, so many different things, intimacy coordinators. All of these people are together crafting this performance. But principally it is a collaboration between actor and director. And that is another dimension that I think is being left out of this conversation when we just reduce it to Is Eddie Redmayne good or not? And it's does the performance being given here, which is the co creation of Eddie Redmayne as the actor and Rebecca Frecknell as the director, does that align with your understanding of what Cabaret is, which is shaped by whatever experience you've had with it? Whether you've only ever seen the film, whether you've only ever seen the Sam Mendes version, which whether you've seen a bunch of regional versions, whether you did it in college and have a huge attachment to it because of that, whatever that may be, does this align with your understanding of it? Do you readily enjoy it with or without context? And unfortunately, all of that is a lot more nuanced than just sharing a hot take on social media. Whether it's x, whether it's TikTok, it's difficult without sitting down and making an incredibly long video like I've just done here to really properly get into the meat of this thing. I feel like there's still so much more that we could say about his performance, about this production in general, about the history of this role, but I also think that that could be considered excessive. So for now, I feel like that's all that I have to say about it and get the thing out of my system. In any case, this having become a source of debate on social media, I would love to hear what you all have to say in the comments section down below. Especially if you've seen his performance, if you saw it in London, if you've seen it on Broadway, if you've seen any of those other historic MC performances before, if you have a particular insight based on anything that I've said in today's video, let me know all of your thoughts and feelings in the comments section. In the meantime, I hope that you enjoyed today's video. If you found all of the noise about his performance as maddening as I have, then perhaps this has been cathartic or enlightening for you. I don't know if you enjoyed it, make sure to subscribe to my channel. There's a button somewhere below this YouTube video where you can turn on notifications. Then YouTube will let you know when I am sharing new videos. I have many exciting reviews coming soon as well as some other hot takes and news. All of the usual stuff. You can also go and find me on other social media platforms. I am mickyjotheatre on X, on TikTok and on Instagram and 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.