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Cabaret at Stages St. Louis offers insight into the darkness of an era

By Daniel  Hines
Publisher
America’s Seniors at www.TodaysSeniorsNetwork.com

There is always something disquieting about seeing ‘Cabaret’.  How are we to laugh (which we do), enjoy the  music (which we do) all the while knowing that we are witnessing the slipping into one of the darkest eras of history—the launch of the Nazi Party to power in Hitler’s Germany. 

Perhaps the answer is that we recognize ourselves among those who were blind to just what was going on—or chose to ignore it, believing that the aberration of the Nazi ascendancy as an aberration but also just a part of human nature. 

The solution: Offset the grimness with the ironic view of David Elder, who does a magnificent job who supposedly is the Master of Ceremonies at the seedy Kit Kat club which provides the backdrop for ‘Cabaret’ but who really is more like an MC exposing us to ourselves.

Elder is appropriately slinky, manipulative, shocking and whimsical as he leads us through the exploits of Sally Bowles, played by Jane Paterson, who has ended up in Berlin as an entertainer, as well as a part of the Lost Generation, albeit the English version.    As such, she is passed from lover to lover, but never has any regrets, seeming to believe it’s as natural as breathing.  She seems to think only of the next 24 hours, the next party, the next lover, except in one beautifully delivered rendition of ‘Maybe This Time.’  It was so well done that it made us wish that Ms. Paterson had played Sally with a bit more vulnerability.  

She has her chance to do so when she moves in with  American writer Clifford Bradshaw, played by David Schmittou.  Schmittou has a wonderful singing voice, whose confusion over his admittedly bi-sexual inclinations, perhaps even a preference for homosexual relations, prevents him from sparking such a chemistry between him and Sally. 

Ironically, the major romantic interest comes from the relationship between the couples’ landlady, played, as she always does to the utmost by Zoe Vonder Haar, and a Jewish fruit merchant, portrayed with just the right amount of understatement as to make one want to shout at him that all around him people who hate him and all Jews are scheming for their elimination.  But, in so doing, the merchant, played bv John Alban Coughlan illustrates the madness of the times that blinded the world to the evil about to be unleashed.  

As always, Stages outdid itself in terms of the scenic and costume design.  One has to always be amazed at the originality and scope of the design team of Stages. 

But, the lingering memory is of Elder’s almost ghostly Master of Ceremonies, who had such a range of demanding performances, including a rousing introduction in which he invites us to come to the Cabaret—and, in so doing, issued the invitation for the start of the 20^th Anniversary season of this amazing little theater that has become such a part of the regional entertainment scenario.