TEMECULA, California — I was recently invited to attend Cabaret by the Temecula Valley Players. Full disclosure, I was invited by my friend and sometimes fellow San Diego Jewish World theater reviewer Doug Friedman, who plays Herr Schultz.
It was my first time seeing a show in the charming Temecula Community Center theater. It’s a really nice deep stage. Scenic designers Kyla Druckman (who is also the director) and Greg Ertell made great use of the space, using the drop down scrims and staging in both the foreground and background to great effect. There’s even enough room for the orchestra to be at the back of the stage.
For those unfamiliar with the story made famous by the 1972 movie starring Liza Minelli, the play opens at the end of the glory days of Berlin, in the late 1920s, just as the Nazis are coming to power. The opening is a joyous celebration of freedom and debauchery on New Year’s Eve.
On a train bound for Berlin we meet an American journalist Clifford Bradshaw (Nicolas Coleman) and a German national names Ernst Ludwig (Johnny Fletcher). Ludwig offers a lucrative deal to Bradshaw, all he needs to do is to take a briefcase to France every so often and he’ll be handsomely compensated.
The charismatic Emcee (Jackson Taitano) introduces us to the Kit Kat Klub, a fictitious club set in the arts and culture/ LGBT neighborhood of Berlin. From there we meet English performer Sally Bowles (Katie Lietz Bailey) the star of the cabaret. Bradshaw is quite taken with Bowles, and after she gets kicked out of her current living arrangement, she seduces Bradshaw and gets him to take her in. She soon becomes pregnant, perhaps by him, perhaps not.
In the meantime, the owner of the inn where Bradshaw is staying, Frauline Schneider (Sonia Watson), is embarking on a romance with the fruit grocer downstairs, Herr Schultz (Doug Friedman). We learn early on the Schultz is Jewish when he wishes “mazel” to Bradshaw.
We start to get an inkling that things are going to take a dark turn when the angel voiced youth singer Lavinia Kendrick comes out to sing a song. At the end of the song, she turns her body so the audience sees the previously hidden Nazi armband.
I always find it notable just how visceral of a reaction I have to seeing Nazi symbols, even though my personal direct family was in the United States many decades before the war, I feel it as if I were but a generation away, and judging by the gasp of the audience, the reveal had its intended shocking effect.
Things really heat up at Schultz’s and Schneider’s engagement party when we learn that Ludwig is a Nazi and that the briefcases that Bradshaw has been smuggling are full of Nazi documents. Ludwig tells Schneider that she cannot marry a Jew. Bradshaw decides that he doesn’t want to work for the Nazis and tries to convince Bowles to go back to America with him.
It’s in this context that Bailey delivers one of the most interesting renditions of the song “Cabaret” that I’ve seen, rather than playing it as a joyful escape away from the increasingly undeniable rise of the Nazis and all that that means, she plays it as conflicted and torn, as she’s trying to make a choice to heed the signs and flee, or to stay with the status quo, she’s neither gay, or Jewish after all.
She also has a line that hit me particularly hard, when she says to Bradshaw that she doesn’t want to talk about politics and what does it really have to do with them anyway. That’s something that I have heard all too much in the past couple of years from former friends who just didn’t want to hear or think about what was actually happening with Israel and Gaza, and were content to believe misleading news items rather than do any real research or even have a conversation as to the truth of the matter. I know many of my fellow tribesmen and women have had the same experience as we find our way in these new times of open antisemitism.
But back to the performance, I’m happy to say that our friend Friedman and his partner Watson were some of the standout actors, as evidenced by the cheer the audience gave them at curtain call. Taitano also earned a loud cheer.
The play was well paced and the 2.5 hours moves quickly. It’s hard to say it’s a light show, with such a heady topic, but it will keep you engaged and entertained, and perhaps even a little thoughtful after.
Cabaret plays at the Temecula Community Theater through March 22.
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Associate Editor Sandi Masori is a theater and food reviewer for San Diego Jewish World. She also helps people self-publish and dabbles in video production.