Broadway Review: Cabaret - Bored and Confused Episode 10

This revival isn't half as innovative as it thinks it is. The 1998/2014 revivals also drew the audience immersively into the world of the Kit Kat Klub at Studio 54-- AND with the SUPERB Alan Cumming!! This revival obviously tips its hat too early, and thinks it is so daring and provocative. It looks so much WORSE than other superior revivals.

Reviewed as "The Worst Musical on Broadway"...

Eddie is too,alpha male to get the humor.

FLOP!

In the Brazil production,it is way more immersive,every seat is a table to look like you are on the club but the chairs aren't comfortable,great review!

For Christ’s sake …..it’s CUMMING…..no “s” . You’re fool. Get a life……outside of professional theatre.

I interpreted the suits at the end as them blending in with the n@zis rather than trying to fight them

I thought it was too deconstructed and self knowing the pre-show is a gimmick- have seen better Carbarets

While it was flashy, I have seen better productions with the story.

Originally, Kost sings Tomorrow Belongs To Me at the engagement party at the end of act one but it would make and make no sense for her to be interrupting the love song, Married, between Schultz and Schneider. It would be a plebeian choice to suddenly make her want a husband.

JUST SAW THIS 'CABARET' IN LONDON ON 5/11/24. AN AMERICAN THEATER PROFESSIONAL SINCE 1975, I FOUND THIS NEW VERSION OF 'CABARET' THE MOST BIZARRE TWISTED PIECE OF SHIT I'VE EVER SEEN, AND THAT SAYS QUITE A LOT. THEY HAVE TURNED AN ICONIC HISTORY MAKING BROADWAY MUSICAL OF 1965 INTO A SICK, MORBID, HORROR STORY. THE ALMOST TOTALLY RE-WRITTEN CHARACTERS AND DIRECTION DID NOT WORK FOR ME, ESPECIALLY A 'CLIFF' WHO SEEMED LIKE THE CHARACTER AND ACTOR (CAST AS A YOUNG HIGHLY NAIVE BLACK MAN) WHO BELONGED IN ANOTHER SHOW ENTIRELY....AN ALCOHOLIC, SELF-DESTRUCTIVE 'SALLY BOWLES' GETS FIRED FROM THE KIT KAT CLUB IN THE BEGINNING OF THIS NEW PRODUCTION, AND SPIRALS DOWNWARD FOR THE REST OF THE SHOW....AGAIN, A NEW 'SALLY BOWLES' CHARACTER THAT SEEMED TO BELONG IN ANOTHER SHOW......IF YOU ARE READY FOR A PITCH BLACK "BROADWAY HORROR STORY: THE 'CARRIE' VERSION OF THE CLASSIC KANDER/EBB "CABARET", THEN BY ALL MEANS, PAY INFLATED BROADWAY PRICES ($700/TICKET FOR DINNER AND SEATING AROUND THE STAGE CLOSE-UP), AND PREPARE TO PUKE IF YOU SAW THE ORIGINAL JOEL GREY AND/OR ALAN CUMMINGS VERSIONS. INSTEAD, SPEND YOUR MONEY AND RUSH TO SEE THE BEST RE-IMAGINING POSSIBLE OF "MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG". "IT'S NEVER BEEN BETTER, NOR WILL IT EVER BE AGAIN."

CABARET sucks! Leave it alone already!!! It's been OVERDONE NOW!!! 🤮

Question: having seen this show I don’t know that I agree with your statement that it’s highly immersive or that I would recommend to see it even in the mezzanine. You pay upwards of $200 for nosebleeds and you get a better view than the tables or anywhere else but then it doesn’t matter because Redmayne is mumbling half his lines or speaking like French Kermit. Lots of choices seem to be made for shock value only? The clown suit and skeleton confused the hell out of me and my partner, so much so we are still trying to figure out what they are going for. Cliff is boring and one note, sally scream songs like everything, the only part of the show that was truly exceptional was the portrayal of Herr Shultz, who clearly gave everything he had to the role and it paid off in spades.

Trying to understand how you could say that you did and then in the very last second turn around and recommend a show you couldn’t see half of. If anything this production takes some enormous swings that don’t hit the mark. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but yours is in conflict with itself.

I didn't love or hate it, but my review as I left the theater last week was that it's "overly reimagined". Didn't help that there's no chemistry between Sally and Cliff and his queer experience is brushed aside completely. In fact, all the queer elements have been so flattened out that they are barely a blip in this production. A disappointing production overall...

I really appreciated this revival. My biggest critique was the pre-show, which felt like a glorified tourist trap. It was overcrowded, and about half as impressive as any gay bar in this city. I opted to go right to my seat (which was a nightmare to find). I think that this staging of the production is best to see after you’ve seen a few others. The most striking moment of the show was the group of tipsy tourists clapping and cheering during “Cabaret”, unaware of their jarring irony. Talk about life imitating art! LOL! But in all seriousness, I found the staging to be innovative, impactful, and worth the ticket price. I sat in the newly built mezzanine and wouldn’t change my seat if I saw it again. It is closer to the stage than the original mezz and gives a great visual perspective. This staging is a fully realized piece of art, and I think that the audience headspace needs to be prepared to take in nuance. This would be something great to see alone. Thank you for sharing this review!

The ending has entirely lost it's punch in this version - where previously the Emcee would reveal an Auschwitz uniform before whispering "Life is a Cabaret" and the theater crashing to black - we now have Eddie spoofing Trump while the chorus is dressed like kids who raided their Sears sales rep Dad's closet.

Kost actually jumps in in the middle of Married as well in the 1998 version where she’s singing German while Schultz is singing to Schneider. So that isn’t something that’s new to just this new revival.

I love Cabaret. This version, however, left me pretty cold. I get that art is subjective and that this version is not going to be universally loved, but I felt that they were just so on the nose about the message at the end that they missed all the elements of why people would get sucked in. They started out hard from the start that this was a bad place where bad things were about to happen and as the audience, we're all complicit. Instead of seeing the denizens of the cabaret - the queer and the outcasts - who will eventually become the victims of the Nazis, they made the members of the troop Nazis in the end. It just didn't work for me. And I just didn't enjoy the aesthetic. If the Kit Kat Club was supposed to be a somewhat disreputable, seedy place for naughty fun, this was glitzy and over the top and the styling seemed completely divorced from the setting. I get that they were trying to make this a more modern, timeless retelling of the story, but without the grounding of that era, it just felt like spectacle for spectacles sake.

Terrible show. Stinker.