Cabaret Commentary

 

As Sally Bowles said, “What good is sitting, alone in your room? Come hear the music play – Life is a Cabaret ol’ chum, come to the Cabaret!” Presumably true since our Wednesday trip to the musical brought us to our feet at the finale.

Some thoughts:

• The stage for Cabaret was already set like a sleazy underground bar scene, where every act could be presented as vaudeville. Every act within itself was directed towards the audience, and the emcee had made it clear to Wilkommen, Bien Venue and Welcome all of us.
• The stage contained three doors; I wondered if it was the illusion towards options that each character had – there’s the left door, that could represent those who left, those who understood the effects that propaganda was having on them, who were smart enough to avoid. There was the right side, which was the completely oblivious, like the Sally Bowles, who wanted the party to never stop, and the dream land to last forever, and there was the middle door, for those more conflicted, like Fraulien Schneider, who had a choice to go or stay, but stays because “What would you do?” If you were her and that age. Cabaret had big commentary on propaganda or people and politics…. How easy it is to get swept into something like the Cabaret.
• Things brings along a duality between the cabaret life and real life – the escape from the mundane life for both Cliff and the audience are similar.
• The love stories show two different sides of love and politics, speaking to an American and a German based one. Cliff and Sally share a life with two very stark differences, as Schultz and Schneider are in a more realistic world, but wishing for something more. Does Cabaret question the prisoner-like confines we give to race vs. religion (a.k.a. blacks to America = Jews to Nazi Germany?)
• Hidden messages through the Emcee; Who was the MC? Interestingly enough, he’s a lot of people! (He kind of makes me think of the reporter in Chicago – who can be revealed as a man in some versions…) But he also resembles a deterioration, or closing of the government? He becomes captive of Nazi Germany at the end with his uniform with the yellow and pink triangle. As in he’s a part of a movement that was allowed before Nazi Germany came in (during the Weimar Republic?)
• The Kit Kat Klub – chorus lines! With ladies doing things in unison; and men with all different sexualities – Sex was the big talk of Cabaret, and of Germany in the 1930’s – Money money money makes the world go round?
• It took me a couple seconds to realize in Two Ladies that the MC was dancing with both a male in drag and a female. To emphasize sexual differences?
• Mien Herr – Sally saying that she doesn’t need men? Or that she’d be better off without them? But she had one to begin with? Social commentary on the dream, that she knows or foreshadows Cabaret’s closure, but through men?
• Smuggling goods that are bad? The relation of Paris and Germany. Why did they have to smuggle in these luxury goods of perfume and stockings? What kinds of regulations were there during that time?
• Tomorrow Belongs to Me: Intensive propaganda? Fatherland… the morning will come when the sun will rise, and tomorrow belongs to me!
• Commentary on the distractive qualities of life, through prostitution – which occurred due to the inflation and people needing money…A million marks for a loaf of Bread?  Racy culture where no shame is no gain…

The entire show is an act that we are all a part of. And the act marks the movement away from reality, but also the change between two governmental systems in Germany. Sometimes, the party can’t last forever, and as Cliff said, “The party’s over”.