'Cabaret': The Always Immersive Musical

Hal Prince’s original production, though staged with a traditional proscenium in the Broadhurst Theatre, used a large tilted mirror (designed by Boris Aronson). Before the performance began, and after it ended, the mirror reflected the audience back at themselves. Prince wanted the audience to understand that the musical was not only about the hedonism and antisemitism of Berlin in the interwar period, but also about the United States in the mid-1960s. Both cultures indulged in a drug-fueled sexual revolution at a time in which basic civil rights were denied to minority groups. Prince often recounted his memory of bringing an image of shirtless young men snarling at the camera to rehearsal. He noted that his cast suggested the image came from Nazi Germany, when in fact it was a photo from a recent Life magazine issue—white supremacists protesting the integration of a public school. From the beginning, the audience was meant to be implicated in the moral conflict of cast members like Sally Bowles and Frau Schneider who decide, in the face of authoritarian regimes that do not immediately oppress them, to take the path of self-preservation rather than risk fighting an unwinnable battle against much stronger societal forces. 

In 1987, Prince remounted his original production with most of the same staging (although a few changes were made to the book and score). A recording of this production can be seen in the Theatre on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Sam Mendes’s 1993 production at the Donmar Warehouse in London inspired the 1998 Broadway revival directed by Rob Marshall. Both featured cafe table seating with phones for at least some of the audience to further immerse them in the Kit Kat Klub. The Emcee, played in both productions by Alan Cumming, interacted with the audience more than Joel Grey had done, and, at least on Broadway, brought members of the audience on stage to dance with him during intermission. At the end of the musical, rather than becoming a Nazi as Joel Grey’s Emcee does, Cumming’s Emcee removes his coat to reveal a concentration camp prisoner’s uniform with a pink triangle, indicating a person imprisoned for their sexuality. The musical spoke more directly to the homophobia of the late 20th century and the efforts to protect the civil rights of queer people than earlier productions. This production returned to Broadway in 2014, with Cumming once again playing the Emcee.