Contact Theatre’s Cabaret
Yesterday’s Songs, today’s warnings
Willkommen, Bienvenue
Enter the smoky, seductive haze of the Kit Kat Klub, where everyone is beautiful, the gin flows, champagne bubbles, and inhibitions melt away. But beneath the glittering facade of song and dance (and a bit of skin), a darker melody swells as 1930’s Weimar Germany, specifically Berlin, teeters on the brink, its vibrant and liberal shores threatened by a rising tide of hate. Contact Theatre's Cabaret pulls you into this intoxicating and treacherous world, where love and desire collides with the chilling march of history.
Contact Theatre, established by Ally Brumer and Debora Friedmann in 2019, undertakes an ambitious, prescient production with Cabaret. In her program note, Friedmann, who is also the play’s director and choreographer says, “As a company founded by two Jewish women and descendents of Holocaust survivors, Contact Theatre feels a profound connection to the themes of Cabaret.” This is evidenced by the immense effort of the entire company, on stage, off stage, and Front of House, to create a rich reimagining of a classic story that earnestly engages with contemporary issues.
The rain held off on Friday night as I walked down Boulevard Saint Laurent to the 131 year-old Monument-National, where Cabaret currently occupies the Studio Hydro-Québec. The versatile theatre is transformed, the small stage at the far end of the space housing the musicians, and a curtained entrance, with a high and wide thrust stage extending from one end of the room to the other. This traverse staging creates bicameral seating, with a few rows of chairs on each side, and VIP cabaret tables closest to the stage, the audience of Cabaret becoming the audience of the Kit Kat Klub. I sat on the second floor, with an expansive vantage point. The architecture of this unique theatre is effectively utilized by Malika Pharand’s set design, even incorporating a second floor setting, the dressing room of the club, above the band. The engaging depth of Pharand's design speaks to her intentionality, and cohesion, layering detail in a way that enhances, rather than burdens, the audience's experience. Her belief in affective design is on full display in Cabaret.
Mairead Rynne as The Emcee
Photo by Matthew Sandoval
Life Is Beautiful
The show begins with a simple drum roll, and the introduction of our narrator, The Emcee. From her opening lines Mairead Rynne made it clear that this incredibly challenging (and coveted) role is in expert hands. With a clear and skilled voice, and an incredible emotional range, Rynne leads us through the story of Cabaret, demonstrating engagement over exhibition, as The Emcee deftly guides the audience through charged, emotional scenes as easily as the raunchy and comedic moments in the play.
I was anticipating this portrayal of Sally Bowles, with the character being, at this point, a meta-fictional legend. Julie d’Entremont took my breath away during her introduction, and the energy, the electricity she brings to this dense part refused to let me catch that breath until intermission. And when the second act began, I quickly lost that breath again. With her smoky voice, genuinely incredible emotional control, and a balance of insecurity and confidence, she brought Sally to life, and imbued Cabaret with a heightened level of authenticity.
A standout, but often overshadowed plot in Cabaret centres on the romance between two older characters, Herr Schulz and Frau Schneider. Played by Daniel Winkfield and Lena Maripuu, there was palpable chemistry between the aged lovers, complemented by their seemingly effortless harmonies, prominently featured in “It Couldn’t Please Me More”.
Joel Bernstein rounds out the main cast as the author Cliff Bradshaw, an American novelist, moving to Weimar Germany to write his next book. Based on the auto-fictional author Christopher Isherwood and his story collection, Goodbye To Berlin, Berstein brings a sensibility to an otherwise bonkers story filled with equally bonkers characters. Cliff Bradshaw is a moral anchor, pushing the characters, and the audience, to focus on the deeper story being told: the story of the rise of Nazi Germany.
Lena Maripuu as Fräulein Schneider and Daniel Wilkenfeld as Herr Schultz
Photo by Matthew Sandoval
Do You Feel Good? Yeah, I Bet You Do
The ensemble cast is a talented collection of performers, many playing multiple small roles. The energy of this group, and their bond, is prominently featured. Handling evocative, and sometimes complicated choreography, many characters, costume changes, scene changes, and more, the cast excelled as a team, a powerful theatre unit. Jonathan Vanderzon’s Ernst Ludwig was easily unlikeable as the vocal Nazi representative. Erin Yardley-Jones’ Fritzie was a riot, bringing a chaotic element to the stage that made it hard to take your eyes off her. Her personal rendition of “Tomorrow Belongs To Me”, the fake Nazi song written by composers Kander and Ebb, was a particularly challenging moment, a moving heel turn, highlighting for the audience the sort of betrayal felt by people at the time, learning of the newly-forming allegiances of their friends and colleagues.
While the ensemble was collectively strong, demonstrating a very effective casting process for Contact Theatre, there were two actors that struggled with the material. For Marc Ducusin, the role of Max was a challenge, both with the text and general physical confidence in the character. Unfortunately for Ducusin, it’s important that Max is portrayed as a real shady guy, which the actor doesn’t have the range for, but considering his strength elsewhere in the production, he’ll get there. The character of Bobby was juxtaposed against the rest of the ensemble, with much more drastic, and contemporary makeup, representing the actor’s performance persona Little Star, far more than an authentic member of the Kit Kat Klub, or the cast itself. As well, Friendmann’s choreography is detailed, energetic, and often elegant, unfortunately exposing Little Star’s lack of trained dance experience.
Two standouts of the Cabaret ensemble are Caeleigh McDonald as Lulu, who has that little je ne sais quoi that makes it impossible to look away when she’s on stage, especially executing Friedmann’s choreography, and Santiago Montejo, who inhabits no less than four characters, demonstrating not just raw talent, but an impressive array of skills, and a decent German accent.
Photo by Matthew Sandoval
Forget It, We Have No Troubles Here
Malika Pharand isn’t just responsible for the set design of Cabaret, as she’s also credited as the lighting designer. The lighting of the production was notable. With the audience flanking the corridor stage and additional set pieces occupying the space, the lighting design faced the challenge of clearly delineating scenes and establishing atmosphere without blinding the viewers. This was achieved, with Pharand’s design serving to separate the space for individual settings, private moments, while also conveying the spectacle of the Kit Kat Klub. This production also features a favorite theatrical element of mine, shadow puppetry, designed by Chris Wardell. The puppets on the screen, occasionally placed in front of the dressing room set on the second floor, served as story transition, explanation, and was even used for the hilariously risque performance of “Two Ladies”.
The technical excellence extended to Carmen Mancuso's sound design, which achieved impeccable audibility for both dialogue and songs. The subtle and balanced sound cues further enhanced the immersive experience, keeping the audience fully within the world of the play.
The rich and resonant theatrical experience of Cabaret owes its power to the direction and choreography of Debora Friedmann, co-founder of Contact Theatre, who expertly brought each distinct element together. From the opening drum roll to the final melancholy note, the production completely enveloped the audience. The character development, the believable relationships and chemistry, the strategically placed scenes and set transitions, and the sometimes conceptual, borderless choreography, all are a testament to the talent of a director who has given this production everything she has. One particularly moving moment comes with the startling, abstract demonstration of a brick thrown through a window, demonstrating Friedmann and her team’s skilled inventiveness, as this reviewer was both startled, saddened, and captivated by the broken glass.
Julie d’Entremont as Sally Bowles
Photo by Matthew Sandoval
It Couldn’t Please Me More
As an artist deeply invested in the possibilities of immersive theatre (which is the core of my own artistic practice, including my theory essay on 'Strategies of Immersion'), I'm particularly attuned to productions that seek to smash the traditional fourth wall. This version of Cabaret doesn't just invite you to watch; it compels you to step directly into the discrete, clandestine world of the Kit Kat Klub the moment you cross the threshold. The meticulous attention to detail is striking: the venue itself felt transformed, even adorned with authentic-looking posters advertising the Kit Kat Klub, a detail that subtly underscored the show's diegetic reality. These very posters became a chilling visual metaphor during the intermission, silently being covered by Nazi propaganda, a creeping intrusion of the outside world into this seemingly insulated haven.
The strategic placement of VIP tables close to the stage cleverly blurred the lines between spectator and participant, offering specific audience members a heightened level of interaction. This choice, coupled with Pharand's dynamic set, immediately established the depth of the environment. Adding to the sense of immersion was the disorienting yet thrilling feeling upon entry: a brief moment of recalibration as we, the audience, began to shed our own realities and re-orient ourselves within the Kit Kat Klub's decadent environment. This demonstrates the immersive strategy of Disorientation, a crucial first step in fostering a new sense of presence and meaning for the audience within the performance.
The production employs a casual mirroring of aspects of our own reality, with a functioning bar offering drinks, enhancing the feeling of being within a real cabaret theatre space. The innovative use of telephones at the VIP tables, ringing pre-show and offering a direct line to the characters before the narrative officially began, was a particularly inspired touch. It provided an intimate and personalized entry point into the world of Cabaret, a tangible example of the production's commitment to truly immersive engagement. Debora Friendmann and her team’s dedication to achieving a fully realized and interactive environment is a testament to their understanding of how to include an audience, of what immersive theatre really means.
Joel Bernstein as Cliff Bradshaw and Julie d’Entremont as Sally Bowles
Photo by Matthew Sandoval
What Would You Do?
The vibrant yet volatile world of Cabaret is not pure fiction. It's deeply rooted in the real experiences of a gay English writer named Christopher Isherwood during his time in Weimar-era Berlin in the early 1930s. Isherwood's semi-autobiographical "Goodbye to Berlin" introduced Sally Bowles. Inspired by Christopher Isherwood's real-life encounters with the captivating and complex English cabaret singer Jean Ross in Weimar Berlin, her unique blend of bohemian spirit, underlying vulnerability, and determined yet often misguided aspirations formed the foundation for the unforgettable character of Sally Bowles. This character not only anchored Isherwood's literary works such as his novella and the encompassing Goodbye to Berlin, but also transitioned to the silver screen in adaptations of I Am a Camera (1955) and the celebrated Cabaret (1972) starring Liza Minnelli. The archetype of the carefree but inwardly fragile woman navigating a vibrant social scene even served as a significant influence on other memorable fictional characters, most notably Holly Golightly in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's and its film adaptation.
Ross's experiences navigating the bohemian and sexually liberated, but increasingly precarious atmosphere of Berlin's underground clubs informed Sally's complex and self-destructive nature. Kander and Ebb's musical, while fictionalized, captures the very real tension of this historical moment, where the burgeoning freedom of queer subcultures and artistic expression existed alongside the ominous rise of Nazi ideology. This juxtaposition, powerfully demonstrated on stage in Contact Theatre’s production, continues to resonate profoundly today. The story serves as a potent reminder of the fragility of societal acceptance and the insidious nature of political extremism, urging us, contemporary audiences, to recognize the warning signs when marginalized communities face increasing threats, and freedoms are eroded. The seductive allure of escapism, embodied by the Kit Kat Klub itself, stands in stark contrast to the harsh realities gathering just outside its doors, even creeping onto the stage, a dynamic that sadly mirrors various periods in history, and continues to hold urgent relevance in our current global landscape.
Photo by Matthew Sandoval
Why Can’t The World Lieben
Contact Theatre's Cabaret lingers long after the final note, not merely as a theatrical spectacle, but as a potent and timely reminder of history's echoes. Through committed performances, an ingeniously utilized space, and a strong understanding of theatrical immersion, this production doesn't just present a story; it invites us to witness the seductive allure of denial in the face of encroaching darkness. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to have experienced this significant reimagining, born from a deeply personal connection to its enduring themes. It serves as a call to vigilance, urging us to learn from the lessons of the past as we navigate the complexities of our present. This compelling production of Cabaret, at the Monument National offers Montreal audiences a crucial opportunity to experience this vital story firsthand, but only until May 24th. Don't miss your chance to step into the Kit Kat Klub and confront the shadows gathering within.
There was a cabaret and there was a Master of Cerеmonies
And there was a city callеd Berlin in a country called Germany
It was the end of the world
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