Mickey Jo (0:00)

Oh my God. Hey, my name is Mickey Jo and for possibly the last time, Vilkomen Bienvenue. Welcome to this video all about the Broadway production of Cabaret. Now, I say for the last time, don't worry, I'm not dying. But the Broadway revival of Cabaret sort of is the production currently running at the KitKat Club in New York, aka the August Wilson Theatre announced earlier this week that it would welcome new stars in the roles of the MC and Sally Bowles, but at the end of their limited run it would also conclude performances on Broadway. The production opened in New York in the last Broadway season, originally starring Eddie Redmayne and Gail Rankin, and before that had originated at the KitKat Club, aka the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End, where Eddie Redmayne had already played the role of the mc, this time opposite Jessie Buckley, with the two of them both winning Olivier Awards for their starring roles alongside the supporting cast, who also won the Oliviers. In fact, Cabaret in London swept the Oliviers, but I'll tell you a little bit more about that momentarily. In any case, it did not have quite the same success on Broadway, which is just one of many factors that has led to towards the Broadway production closing much sooner than the London one, which is set to celebrate a Milestone anniversary, its 1500th performance early next month. So why then has there been such a discrepancy between the show's success on either side of the Atlantic? Is it to do with a difference in what audiences are looking for? Is it a financial difference? Well, these are factors, but there's also a little bit more to it. We're going to be talking through all of this today as we really kind of break down what it is that makes a show, particularly a lavish musical revival, successful on Broadway. So buckle up. Even though the body is still quite warm and closing is a few months away yet, and you still have the chance to go and see the show and buy tickets and all that jazz. That's actually a different Kandernev musical. We are going to be performing something of an autopsy on the Broadway revival of Cabaret. Why is it closing on Broadway? And as always, if you enjoy this video, make sure to subscribe right here on YouTube. Turn on those notifications so that your mobile telephone lets you know every single time I post a new video, which at the moment is constantly don't let that put you off. There's lots to talk about. Or if it's preferable for you, go ahead and follow me on podcast platforms. And as always, mine is just one opinion about all of this, and I would love to know what thoughts and reactions and insights you have. Please share all of your feelings in the comments section down below. Have you seen Cabaret on Broadway? Have you seen it multiple times? Will you be sad to see it leaving? Is this a production that you avoided? And if so, please tell us why. In the meantime, here are all of my thoughts on the Broadway revival of Cabaret when it's closing and why it's closing. So to begin then, as I adjust my silk scarf for those of you following the saga of my times on Broadway, yes, I finally bought the scarf. I'm not going to tell you how expensive it was. We're between friends. Let's read through the press release that actually announced the production's closing along with its new casting, which in and of itself is a nice little press move to make the story a not completely dismal one. It's not just a closing notice going out. It doesn't seem like a failure. It's instead it's saying, here are the new leads. Isn't this exciting by the way? They're going to be the last ones that we have. So it doesn't make the show feel like something that's doomed. Because I guess if that's the vibe and the story that you're putting out into the universe, some people might not buy tickets because some people may assume, oh, it's closing. That means it can't be very good, which is a reductive assessment of the situation. Plenty of shows are closing on Broadway right now that have a tremendous amount of value. Real Women have Curves springs to mind. And in truth, Cabaret is not closing all that soon. They are also giving people plenty of notice to book their tickets before the production ends. And what they've said here is that the Tony Award winning production of Cabaret at the KitKat Club is welcoming Emmy, Grammy and three time Tony Award winner Billy Porter. He's Got that Egged without the O as the MC and two time Olivier Award nominee Marisha Wallace as Sally Bowles. Now the two of them have played these roles before and recently they have just finished a stint playing both of these roles in the West End production. If you and in the West End production and if you're wondering what their performances were like, I got the chance to go and see them. I saw the Galanite and I chatted a little about it and they're very different interpretations of these roles here on social media as well. So check out my video podcast, whatever it may be about that. In particular, I had no idea what Marisha's Sally Bowles was going to be, and I was staggered by it. I thought she was magnificent. And just to briefly talk about the fact that these two are going to Broadway, I think it's really exciting. I think, you know, it's brilliant on either side of the Atlantic to platform really talented, established performers in these roles who haven't formally had the opportunity to play these roles. Because in so many productions of Cabaret in so many different starry casting combinations, we have not seen a great many performers of color, particularly black actors, getting to play the MC or Sally Bowles. And there's a little bit of historical baggage that goes with that conversation. But after so many different interpretations, you do start to wonder why nobody has been open to casting it in this way. So kudos to the producers of Cabaret for casting these two, as well as other performers of color, as well as Ali Cravalo and Leighton Williams in the West End and multiple covers who have played the role as well. I also think given that there has been an unfortunate trend of Broadway productions closing just after they finally cast African American performers in the lead, it is probably for the better from an optics perspective and a storytelling perspective that they announce that the production is planning to close before these two even go into it and not after they begin their runs. Because I am already getting wartime flashbacks to a lot of unfortunate incidents from Broadway past. Now here are the details if you are curious. They are going to begin performances on Tuesday, July 22, replacing the current stars in the role, Orville Peck and even Orbizad. Once again, I saw the two of them, I made a video about it and if you want to know what they're like, you can check that out here as well. And they will be starring in the musical for its final 13 weeks through Sunday, October 19, which is to be the closing performance. Now there is a little statement here from the award winning director Rebecca Frecknell who directed the production first in the West End and then subsequently on Broadway. I can think of no better way to celebrate this production's incredible run on Broadway than by welcoming Billy and Marisha into the company for our final 13 weeks. They brought down the house every night on the West End, she said. On the West End. This is a British theatre person who said on the what a betrayal. I'm so sorry Rebecca, but wow. In the West End we say people get very heated about this. I don't care much to accidentally quote Cabaret itself, but a lot of people will. My goodness when this gets found out, she said. They brought The House down every night on the West End. And I cannot wait for Broadway audiences to experience the electricity they generate together. And you know what? Me too. What a treat for Broadway audiences. And there is a statement here as well from Adam Spears on behalf of the producers that speaks to this casting, but also more broad to what the show has achieved in New York with this particular run. Having the chance to present this masterwork to audiences at this moment in history. Very true. Didn't seem like it was going to be quite so topical when it opened, but boy, did it get. There has been the honor of a lifetime. We are so proud of what Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club has achieved on Broadway, artistically, culturally and with audiences. And, you know, that introduces a conversation about what really makes a show successful and whether we can judge something on more than just its earnings and its financial success. But we'll talk about that in just a moment. He goes on to say, we've been unbelievably lucky to have had such an incredible string of cast members lend their talents to this run. And Billy and Marisha are the ideal stars to lead us into this final stretch. So all of that having been said, let's rewind the clock on this a little bit and go back to Cabaret's commencement on Broadway and see if we can find out where the troubles began. In fact, to really have that conversation, we're going to have to go pre Broadway to the West End production. So here's the thing. This is opening in the immediate months following the reopening of West End theaters after the COVID 19 pandemic, implying that this had been planned, if not during the pandemic, then probably prior to it. And this was planned with ATG productions involved, but also with Eddie Redmayne heavily involved. He made a joke in his Olivier Award winning speech that when he'd felt a little bit anxious at one rehearsal, the brilliant Emily Benjamin, who was the original understudy for Sally Bowles in the production and is a fantastic talent, had come over to him and said, you wouldn't have been cast if you weren't talented, if you couldn't do this. To which he replied, actually, Emily, I think I cast myself. And allegedly, he also had input on who was to play Sally Bowles alongside him or opposite him. And I say that the MC and Sally don't interact in the production nearly as much as Sally does with Cliff. But from the off, this was a production built around two stars, the MC and Sally Bowles, and it was to be Eddie Redmayne. And Jesse Buckley in a reopening West Extend alongside many other shows. And it completely transformed the Playhouse theater, which used to have terrible sight lines, FYI, into a really brilliant traverse staging with multiple atmospheric bar areas that you moved through after entering via the stage door. And critically, a small company separate to the cast of the main show of prologue performers who played instruments and danced in those foyer spaces before the start of the show. This was to be a lavish, atmospheric, semi immersive production and it really won over critics and audiences alike. There was some discussion about expensive ticket prices, but there were elements on offer for that as well, because you had a lot of Cabaret table seating, you had pre theatre dining options, you had bars selling champagne and Toblerone. What else do you need when you go to the theatre? And sure enough, a few months later, the Olivier Awards came around and the production scooped an awful lot of them. All four of the acting awards in a musical that year went to the cast members of Cabaret. In fact, it won seven Olivier Awards and is tied for the most Olivier Award win wins for any musical revival in history. All of which seem to be preparing it for obvious Broadway success. Except for the fact that from almost the moment that it was announced that it was going to be heading stateside, there was a little bit of an issue. And that issue comes in the form of a previous production, one which curiously originated at the Donmar Warehouse but thereafter was not seen in London or indeed in the UK. It transferred over to Broadway in the 90s. This was a production directed by Sam Mendes, starring the very memorable Alan Cumming and the late, brilliant Natasha Richardson. That production was so successful on Broadway that it ran for a good few years, cycling through a lot of starry replacement cast options, just like this current production, including Neil Patrick Harris and Raul Esparza, and Dexter from TV's Dexter, whose name is escaping me at this exact moment. Susan Egan from Beauty and the Beast, of course. And that production, if I'm not mistaken, went on to tour around the US as well. Which in general is not something that we see from Broadway musical revivals. New musicals, it's very frequent that they will open on Broadway and then either at a certain point, if they're doing really well, or once they have closed, they will go on to tour around the us and sometimes we see musical revivals doing this as well. Parade, currently touring around the US Company from a little before that, also touring around, but something like the about to Close revival of Sunset Boulevard because of the way that it's staged, because of the way that it's framed around one particular piece of iconic central casting. We would not anticipate to see that touring around the us. And the same for a lot of other revival productions, like most of the Sondheim's Gypsy currently, and in the case of this Cabaret, because of its traverse staging, because of the atmospheric elements, because of the always starry casting, again, we're probably not going to see it on tour, but from what I remember, that last Broadway revival did, and in fact, it was so well loved that it was remounted on Broadway with Alan Cumming returning to the role of the MC in the mid 2010s, with once again, a lot of celebrity names in the cast. You had Michelle Williams, you had Emma Stone, you had Sienna Miller. I think with the key problem being that that artistically celebrated revival hinging primarily around the casting as the biggest star attached to it, Alan Cumming doing Cabaret again was, you know, the big drive there, Even with a lot of famous Sally Bowles next to him, that made it difficult for a new production to come in what felt like very shortly afterwards, even though it wasn't necessarily. There has been some similar conversation around the Broadway return of Gypsy, even though that show comes back to Broadway about as frequently every single time. And curiously, this wasn't something that had seemed to impact the West End production, though the show had been seen in a different iteration, one directed by previous National Theatre artistic director Rufus Norris at the Savoy Theatre. Not too many years before, that production had also toured a couple of times around the uk. But say what you will about a British audience, we can be sluts for a little bit of starry casting, and especially in a musical here, the big stars tend to do big productions of plays. So for someone of Eddie Redmayne's stature to be returning to the stage as the MC in Cabaret, it had a lot of people very excited on Broadway. However, before the production had even opened, there was a lot of nostalgia for the last run of the show, the Sam Mendes version, and for Alan Cummings performance, and it seemed immediately too great a shadow to measure up to. So perhaps it's of little surprise then that when the show did open at the August Wilson Theatre, bringing with it its own interpretation of the way that it was staged in London, with renovated interior bar spaces and access via the stage door and stickers over the back of your phone so that you didn't take photos or once inside, arguably shooting themselves in the foot a little bit in terms of marketing, especially once they'd already revealed what the interiors looked like, but admittedly providing an atmosphere where nobody's on their phones and they're all just living in the moment. And once again with prologue cast members, with musicians and dancers both in the foyer spaces and in the auditorium, kind of walking over chairs and playing funny little clowny mime games with audience members. Despite all of the attempts to replicate the same winning formula from the uk, the show was not reviewed nearly as well by critics, with reviews, especially from major publications, that were largely middling. Jesse Green for the New York Times wrote, the problem for me is that Cabaret has a distinctive profile already. Speaking to the familiarity with the last revival, the extreme one offered here frequently defaces it. And honestly, with that kind of a perspective on the material entering into the theatre, what kind of a reinventing revival could possibly hope to measure up? Similarly damning was Greg Evans for Deadline, who wrote, the promise of an overwhelming theatrical event just never quite makes good on itself. Certainly not with Rankin's teary, intentionally overwrough delivery of the title song. That's a reference to Gayle Rankin, who played the role of Sally Bowles opposite Eddie Redmayne once the production arrived on Broadway. We get it. Sally isn't meant to be a big star. I'd still rather hear Liza, who, you know, may or may not give quite as astounding an award winning a performance in these current years. We're going to carry on. Johnny Oleksinski for the New York Post, who wrote, enjoy the buzz because it wears off quickly once seated inside the similarly reconfigured theatre space, the revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb's classic musical Cabaret. Why no Joe Masteroff? Sunday night on Broadway begins and our response shifts a tad. Ow, this is cold. Some reviews were outright negative. Adam Feldman for Time out wrote, life's too short for this cabaret. Zachary Stewart for Theatre Mania said, this is a story that speaks to now, and I really wish I could hear it clearly over the hideous shouting of auteur Rebecca Frecknell's grotesque production at the August Wilson Theatre. Similarly, the often exhausting Robert Hoefler for the Rap wrote, near the end of Cabaret, Rankin sings the title song and like so much of this production, she only plays the subtext that life is anything beautiful, despite what the MC has been telling us. Indeed, life can be hell. She's a little late to that realization. Redmayne is the dev. I don't know where we're going with this and I'm just going to abort on that one. Honestly, I regret bringing out to your attention. Some were positive just for a little bit of balance. Matt Windman in AMNY wrote it all makes for an exciting, edgy and painstakingly detailed production, while Entertainment Weekly Emlyn Travis said Rebecca Fracknell's celebrated take on the legendary musical has transferred to Broadway in a gritty, haunting production that is jaw droppingly gorgeous from start to finish. So a mixed from New York's critics, but in any case not the hugely enthusiastic one that the same production and Eddie Redmayne had received in London, all of which began to make the production's Tony Award chances look a little bit fraught. And inevitably they did not win Best Revival of a Musical. Nor did Eddie win Best Leading Actor in a musical as he and the show both had done in London. They both lost out to Merrily We Roll along, the hugely celebrated and admittedly brilliant revival of the historic Stephen Sondheim and George Firth flop, with the show itself winning best revival of a musical and Jonathan Groff winning for his leading performance, which proved to be impossibly challenging competition. And if New York wasn't particularly ready for a new production of Cabaret or not particularly sentimental about it, then they were hugely ready and vastly sentimental about Merrily We Roll Along. In the years following legendary composer lyricist Stephen Sondheim's death, this was a production that took one of his historic but well remembered flops and turned it finally into a huge critic, political and financial success. Everyone loved this production. The writing was on the wall. Not the writing of these symbols that you see on the walls at Cabaret, but that Merrily was gonna win the Tony. And if we sidestep for a moment here to really consider how a production attains longevity on Broadway, these are some of the things that we need to look into. Because you'll notice that Merrily We Roll along was a limited run that did very well financially and then closed at the end of its limited engagement. They did not, a little to my disappointment, attempt to bring in new stars and replace the fantastic trio who were in the show and run for even longer. They, much like the current production of Sunset Boulevard, decided to conclude amidst success, Sunset, having just won the Tony for Best revival, also along with Best Leading Actress in a musical, four star Nicole Scherzinger. But Cabaret, meanwhile, was always planning to run longer in New York than Merrily We Roll along hoped to. And that is because they had renovated this entire theater. They had taken the august wil and not only redecorated the bar areas, but they had reconfigured a new entrance route and critically, they had refurbished the entirety of the August Wilson Theatre auditorium to turn it from traditional proscenium staging into traverse staging or sort of in the round with a small circular stage in the middle of the auditorium, which obviously represents a significant investment. And on top of that, the show was also very expensive to run week on week because of all of the different personnel involved. You've got actors, you've got musicians, you've got actor musicians. You also have a lot of different staff members helping to coordinate all of this. You know, you have a little bit of enhanced security because of the way that the audience members have to enter. You have the person who was giving out complimentary shots on arrival. You're also paying for complimentary shots on arrival. In general, musicals are more expensive than plays, and some musicals are even more expensive than most. And what seems to be a consistent rule is that Broadway shows are more expensive than exactly the same show mounted in the West End. And when it was originally announced that the Playhouse Theatre in London was going to be turned into the KitKat club, there was something like a five year trajectory that was revealed, after which point they would have paid for the refurbishment itself. So the production was always going to hope to run at least for five years in order to make the whole thing worth it. I can only imagine that that timeline may have been even longer for Broadway because it would have taken longer to make that money back. That may be one of the reasons why ticket prices were even more expensive. I mean, tickets in general are more expensive in New York than in London. The numbers that make New Yorkers bulk are not quite the same ones that have that effect. West End audiences, you get a lot of American tourists coming over here to London and saying, wow, these are cheap. Likewise, you have a lot of London theatre goers who fly over to New York and say, what the hell is going on? Which in the current Broadway economic climate is an entirely valid question and an obvious reason that we have to talk about as to why Cabaret has suffered on Broadway. You know, the world is going through an economic crisis in many different countries, and fewer people are able to afford the kind of exorbitant price charged by these Broadway tickets. Which isn't to say that the producers are just trying to rip everyone off. It's the reality of the business for them. But if there are fewer people who can afford those tickets, then they're going to sell fewer of those tickets. And inevitably, when we break down all of the reasons why a show closes, it comes back to not enough people are buying tickets, not enough people are buying tickets. In advance to make the theater owners happy, to make everyone feel comfortable that the thing is going to continue to be more successful than getting another show in in its place and on Broadway. This is more conspicuous in the West End because the gross week are made public. And for a little while now, it has been clear that Cabaret has not been living up to its full potential. But why exactly is that? We often talk about the things that generate big box office numbers being well known titles, well known musicals and well known names. And Cabaret is a show that attempted to bring all of those things together. That I think has been the key to its success in the West End is, you know, offering a new, exciting, edgy production for younger audiences. It has a classic title that appeals to older audiences and it also has star names that appeal to a lot of people beyond traditional theater audiences. And yet the same recipe hasn't worked in Manhattan. So why is that? So let's consider what are the factors that are going to make particularly a big Broadway musical revival do well at the box office? One of them is critical buzz and Tony Awards. Especially if tickets are going to be that expensive, New Yorkers and tourists alike are going to be looking towards any kind of statement of quality. If they're going to be spending that much, let alone groups, let alone families, they're going to be looking to the reviews and looking to the Tony Awards to make sure that they're not wasting their money on a disappointing production. It's also, I'm told, why a handful of people watch my videos before going to the theater. And with the New York Times considered by many within the industry to be the most important review that a Broadway show can get, offering a mixed to negative perspective, it already wasn't looking great for Cabaret. There's also a conversation to be had about Eddie Redmayne's star power. Does it mean a little bit more in the West End than it does on Broadway? Did Gail Rankin offer that much to production as a TV star who is best remembered via a character she's played on certain TV series, if not necessarily by name. And then you have the Tony Awards, where Cabaret did quite well in terms of nominations and it didn't walk away entirely empty handed, but it didn't win the big awards that it must have been hoping to, in particular best revival of a musical. And though the Tony Awards broadcast is usually meant to help boost the box office of any Broadway show, something happened to Cabaret that was a little unexpected. Eddie Redmayne's characterization of the mc, which enjoyed very much in the West End and on Broadway was suddenly brought to wider audiences via a high definition televised performance of Vilcomin. And he found himself at the center of a little bit of a peculiar culture storm as the Internet tried to decipher his characterization and process. Whether or not they thought it was unbearably strange, the story of Eddie Redmayne's creepy Tony Awards performance broke through into mainstream news outlets. And I know that a lot of people were talking about this and curious about this because I made a video discussing here on YouTube and that video did way better than any of my other Cabaret content. I wish, as many people had watched my initial reviews of the productioners, had watched the one breaking down, whether or not Eddie Redmayne's MC was creepy. And so already the initial rollout for Cabaret on Broadway hadn't been what they were expecting. Tickets were very expensive, they hadn't picked up any Tony Awards. There wasn't nearly as much anticipation of the production because the last revival was still in recent memory. And a lot of people anecdotally felt as though they didn't need another Cabaret. Yet little did they know that the political world was about to change and so was the casting for the show. Eddie Redmayne and Gail Rankin departed the production and were replaced by Adam Lambert and Ali Cravalho, which, mostly due to Lambert's popularity, or at least that's what I've heard, anecdotally provided a significant boost to the box office. And in truth, it was around his performance that most of the buzz was subsequently happening. Conversation shifted from whether or not you thought Eddie Redmayne was doing a weird Kermit the Frog voice in that version of Cabaret that none of us really liked that much. Two, Are you going back to Cabaret to see Adam Lambert and listen to him opt up in I Don't Care Much and lambast the audience members laughing at the anti Semitic jokes. In fact, the buzz around Adam Lambert's brilliant performance in the show, which I enjoyed thoroughly, I didn't get the chance to see Ali opposite him, but I also heard good things about her, managed to sort of reinvigorate the show during his time there, they saw a boost to the box office. A lot of people were buying tickets, especially to see him. It helped that, you know, he was sort of musical theater adjacent because of his inherent theatricality as a performer, hadn't done stage musicals since becoming a well known and successful recording artist. And perhaps even more impactfully, he changed the narrative of the show in terms of its PR presence. And this was the kind of energy they wanted to continue after those two left the production, at which point they brought in new stars Orville Peck and Eva Noblezada, with her talking very much to the die hard theater fans who might return to see the show. She'd sold a lot of tickets alongside Jackson, Jeremy Jordan in the Great Gatsby and with Orville Peck hoping to bring in a bunch of fans from beyond Broadway and, let's face it, gay people in particular, those who hadn't already been queuing up at the box office to see BB Neuwirth. I see you. I'm one of you. I'm with you. And though Orville Peck, I thought, was singularly brilliant as the MC and even Obizada, unsurprisingly wonderful as Sally Bowles, they never managed to quite match the box office of their predecessors. And it seemed as though internally there was a little bit of surprise about Orville Peck not generating quite as much enthusiasm as people thought that he might. And there are a handful of possibilities about why this might have been. For one thing, I tend to think of the gay audience as being just a little bit fickle, but for another slightly more robust reason. The act of trying to bring in audiences from outside Broadway and from across America is always a noble and sensible pursuit, but is also a challenging one because you have to get people so excited and so interested that they're willing to travel across America. And you're only really able to appeal to people who have have the funds to travel across America or from beyond North America. Then you have the mask of it all. Now Orville Peck is another recording artist, a country singer who always appears wearing a facial mask over his eyes, both when performing and in public appearances and on the promotional materials for Cabaret. But it soon emerged with his first performance that he was not going to be wearing a mask for this role. And I wonder if the same thing that boosted Adam Lambert the chance to see see him doing something very like himself theatrically on stage. This MC character, not a million miles from his concert Persona, was the same idea that hurt Orville Peck's performance because he became sort of unrecognizably a part of the show. He took on the role of the MC as the trained actor that he is and seemed nothing like the Orville Peck that fans were expecting. So was the argument to see Adam Lambert getting to see Adam Lambert doing something very Adam Lamberty detrimental when it came to Orville Peck not doing something very Orville Peckish? Or is there another reason that had nothing to do with the casting whatsoever. I've mentioned it a handful of times, but the political tide had changed by the time that Orville and Eva went into the show. Because during the run of Cabaret, the US elected a new president, with Donald Trump returning to the White House. And this very marked and troubling shift towards fascism and right wing politics, making the themes and topics of Cabaret eerily pertinent. And so suddenly its depictions of radicalization and Nazism, and a community that allows all of this to happen becomes complicit in it, which is very much sort of the final image of this production from Rebecca Frecknell, as well as the show's overt depictions of anti Semitism were no longer historical, but suddenly painfully current. And for a great many people, this is not something that they want to spend an awful lot of money to go to and see, especially the kind of people who usually go to the theater. The audience usually skews more liberal, more left wing, especially in New York. And you have to imagine that a lot of those people have emotionally been simply trying to stay afloat in the midst of this terrifying administration and this harrowing political time in which we're seeing so much horrifying history repeat itself. Potentially the last thing that they want to do is go and see Cabaret, a show that actually has a powerful message about that chapter, but from an outside perspective could be seen as, you know, offering just sort of a glittery interpretation of it. I actually think this revival speaks more to where we are now than any production of Cabaret beforehand. And now that I've seen it upwards of 10 times on either side of the Atlantic with various different cast members, my takeaway from Rebecca Frecknell's vision is that this is a Cabaret that doesn't necessarily chart the rise of the Nazis in the late 1930s as authentically as previous productions have, or as diligently. But it's one that really see to address the question, how did this society let this happen and is this a path that we are currently on? It speaks quite acutely, I think, to the current political climate, which is both, you know, important and difficult to watch. And so I wouldn't blame audience members who have potentially felt as though Cabaret is not a show they needed to see right now. And whatever the reasons were, for some time now, it has been clear that Cabaret has been slowing down on Broadway. It has been visible in the grosses, but it's also been noticed in the show itself. They scaled back on the prologue performers. They reduced the number in the prologue company. So audience members Were seeing fewer musicians, fewer dancers. In fact, I think they cut all of the dancers and just kept a handful of the musicians in the prologue cast. And that's probably due to union rights more so than anything else. I think if the musicians hadn't been a little more protected by their union, they might have been axed as well. They also, surprisingly, did away with the free shots on arrival, which you wouldn't have thought had added to the budget that much, but allegedly, I heard were costing them $60,000 a week, which I think has more to do with the staff member who was just SOL offering them, rather than them spending $60,000 a week on liquor. Because, you know, at the time, I think I said, just buy cheaper alcohol, for crying out loud. But with all of this having taken place, it isn't exactly a surprise that Cabaret has now announced their closure. And the thing that would have kept them afloat is the ability to bring in huge celebrity casting that would have breathed new life into the box office. At the same time, I think it still would have faced the problems of the current political moment. You know, seeing the comparison with fascism, I don't think help Cabaret. I think it wounds it. And there have been attempts, you can be assured, to get huge stars into this revival. There were attempts before it even made it to Broadway. A lot of the big names have been offered. The West End production. Lady Gaga has been asked. Adele has been asked. Florence Pugh has been asked. Billy Piper has been asked. The list is, in fact, much longer and fascinating. Here are some Broadway ones that we could have had. Jessie J recently said on a radio interview that she had turned down the role and she would have been terrific. And, you know, she might still do it in London. She was kind of grappling with whether or not she should, but she wanted to be a mum to her young kids in that moment. I believe Sabrina Carpenter was also asked. And I also believe that Miley Cyrus, this is one, who was rumored across the Internet, was actually lined up to play Sally Bowles in this production. And you know for a fact they would have kept it open until that happened, because, boy, would that have sold a lot of tickets. As well as bringing in a much wider audience who may have been surprised by some of the themes of Cabaret. And you had to imagine that it was getting harder for them to pull in these stratospheric stars, having not won the tickets, Tony Award. And, you know, it also doesn't offer them all that much because they're not going to be Tony eligible. They're not opening a show they're not going to get reviewed in the same way. At a certain point, it looks like a slightly more upscale version of doing Chicago a couple of streets down, which needless to say, is not the most prestigious option on Broadway. So finally, let's revisit this press release and hear in their own words the show's success. The Broadway production of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club began previews on Monday, April 1, 2024 and quickly became Broadway's hottest ticket, according to the Washington Post. For at least a brief moment, critics called the production an unforgettable and jaw dropping experience. Some of them did, and a ravishing gut punching Timely revival that was Variety. It went on to become the most nominated revival of the 2023-24 season, receiving a total of 21 nominations among the major award organizations, including nine Tony Award noms, Best Revival nominations by the Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Drama Desk Awards and the Drama League League Awards. The London production, Yada yada yada. I've told you all of this before. Cabaret, they go on to say, also one of the most revered and successful musicals of all time, with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, a book by Joe Masteroff, based on the play by John Van Druten, and stories by Christopher Isherwood. It's based on I Am a Camera, which is based on Goodbye to Berlin, and it mentions the iconic songs that are featured. And all of this is true. And this is very Broadway to talk about the show's award nominations and all of this and how it became such a hot ticket. And those are kind of the two minds that Broad has when it comes to success. How much money did we make? How many awards did we win? But there's something to be said as well. And the quote touched on this idea about presenting Cabaret at this time and obviously it wasn't intentional because it predated the political moment that's currently happening. Even if the warning signs were very much all there and, you know, the first Trump presidency having already happened. But I think there is a real success in having produced Cabaret in New York at this time and having cast it in a way that brought in new, new people to hear the story of this show and perhaps learn a little from it. I think that is an important artistic endeavor and that also has to be considered one aspect of success. If a show is doing important work, then we have to think of that as being successful. It can't just come down to its financial success and its awards. It also gave a handful of performers, a much more diverse group of performers than the previous Broadway revival. It's worth saying again, the opportunities to play these brilliant roles and you know, go even further in their careers. Even Obizada got to be another very celebrated star cast leading lady. She's someone with, you know, just musical theater roots and the Jimmy Awards and Miss Saigon and Hadestown. It was great to see her really celebrated alongside these other big screen stars. Adam Lambert came back to the stage. Orville Peck came back to the stage, reminding people of the immense talents that they have as well. And not to mention the delight of thousands of audience members who have been through the doors of the KitKat Club on Broadway and enjoyed themselves immensely. And if one of those was you, I would love to hear from you in the comments section down below. These have been my insights into the end of the road for the Broadway production of Cabaret. I don't know whether it's been explicitly revealed. It wasn't talked about in that press release obviously, but I dare say based on everything we know, that it did not recoup its Broadway investment. However, I don't think that that should be the pick picture frame that we put this in. I think it's still worth considering that the show ran considerably longer and got through more cast changes than most Broadway musical revivals tend to, and that if you got to see it on Broadway and you had a nice time, then you know what, that can be enough as well. In the meantime, the show continues to run into the fall. If you want to go and check it out on Broadway. If you haven't already, please go and see it at the KitKat Club at the August Wilson Theatre. You can find many more videos and podcasts from me talking about the production and various different different cast members that they've had. You can find out what I thought about Billy Porter and Marisha Wallace as well as the current stars. Or if you are London based, then the show continues to run very successfully here. Like I said, approaching its 1500th performance with Hannah Dodd and Rob Madge currently starring. I will be seeing them both in the show next month and I will be talking about it here as well. If you don't want to miss that, make sure you're subscribed to my theater themed YouTube channel. Turn on those notifications so you don't miss it or go follow me on on podcast platforms. In the meantime, Alvida Zayn Abianto and I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey. Joe Theater. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.