USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory once again rivals the finest intimate professional theater in town with its all-around smashing student-performed, student-directed, student-designed revival of the 1966 Kander and Ebb classic Cabaret.

 As any Broadway buff will tell you, Cabaret (book by Joe Masteroff based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories and John Van Druten’s I Am A Camera) centers on a visiting American writer’s love affair with an expatriate English night club entertainer as Nazism takes its hold in pre-WWII Germany.

It’s on a Berlin-bound train that Isherwood alter-ego Clifford Bradshaw (Adam Kronenberger) makes the acquaintance of Ernst Ludwig (Patrick Olsen), the outgoing Berliner who will introduce him to lodgings run by seen-it-all Fräulein Schneider (Eva Zakula) and, more importantly, to Berlin’s pansexual nightlife as overseen by an androgynous Emcee (Patrick Wallace).

Kit Kat Club star Sally Bowles (Sarah Kane) quickly finds herself taken by the handsome American, and before you know it, the expats have become live-in lovers.

Unfortunately for the young twosome, the deeper Sally and Cliff’s intimate coupling gets, the deeper grows Germany’s infatuation with Hitler, inspiring Cliff to have second thoughts about earning extra Deutschemarks as an amateur courier for Ernst.

Fräulein Schneider too begins to think twice about marrying her Jewish suitor, greengrocer Herr Schultz (Luke Matthew Simon), who had previously won her heart with a pineapple, and Berlin, which had seemed to Cliff such a perfect antidote to staid old England, now shows itself to be a considerably more dangerous place to call home-away-from-home.

Director Tyler Ellis and his creative team add their own distinctive touches to the 1998 Broadway revival’s grungier look, its sexualized Emcee (and bisexualized Cliff), and its scantily-clad dancers, Kit Kat Boys having been added to the previously all-female chorus line.

 Though scenic designer Zach Blumner suggests holocaust horrors to come by backing the action with blood-red Nazi imagery, director Ellis smartly allows the audience, like Cliff, to be so bedazzled by Berlin’s nightlife that politics seems almost the last thing on our mind, or at least at first…

Transitions between the reality of Cliff’s day-to-day and the surreality of the Kit Kat’s night-to-night are particularly effective, as if our naïve hero were passing from consciousness to dream state, that is until the improbable presence of flesh-flaunting Kit Kat Girls and Boys at Herr Schmidt and Fraulein Schneider’s engagement party makes it no longer impossible to distinguish between them.

As for the musical’s climactic moments, always a test of a director’s ingenuity and vision, Ellis has come up with quite possibly the most horrifically gut-punching climax of the thirteen Cabarets I’ve seen.

 Choreographer Sophie Thomason finds inspiration in Rob Marshall’s Tony-nominated moves while inventing her own fresh takes on “Don’t Tell Mama” and “Two Ladies,” the “chair-eography” of “Mein Heir,” and a “Kickline” performed barefoot, and having the Emcee’s simian partner show off a pair of lithe leotarded legs in“If You Could See Her” makes the number seem brand new.

Wallace’s glam-makeup-sporting Emcee may reveal a bit less skin than Alan Cumming’s 1998 Tony winner, but his commanding star turn reveals an entertainer cut from the same extravagant cloth.

 Kane’s sensational Sally masks a vulnerable heart with a hard-edged devil-may-care attitude, sports an English accent so spot-on, you may think she grew up in the UK, and performs “Don’t Tell Mama,” “Maybe This Time,” and a gut-wrenching title tune to deserved cheers.

Kronenberger’s fresh-off-the-farm innocence makes him the perfect choice to play Cliff, Patrick Olsen adds to his  list of MTR gems with a suave, instantly likable Ernst, and Samantha Berger gives frisky boarder Fraulein Kost a just-right insouciance and some sultry pipes in a German-language “Married.”

With most of its characters not much more than a decade older than cast members, Cabaret works particularly well as a university production, its sole major exceptions in Zakula and Simon’s more than capable hands, both performers displaying a maturity and depth far beyond their years, she with a gut-wrenching “What Would You Do” and he and she together with a charming “It Couldn’t Please Me More.”

Ensemble members Ali Appelbaum (Texas), Mehdi Bennani (Herman, Max), Liz Buzbee (Lulu), Taylor Edlin (Victor), Sabrina Fest (Helga), Chloe Gonzalez (Frenchie), Emma Kantor (Rosie), Andrew Neaves (Hans, Rudy), Lauren Teruya (Fritzie), and Sasha Urban (Bobby) prove themselves bona fide triple-threats in the making, the Girls in particular benefiting from Mallory Gabbard’s character-defining costumes.

Edward Hansen scores high marks too for his dramatic lighting (the inferno-red flashes are especially effective) and Ethan Zeitman for his equally fine sound design, and with music director Harrison Poe at the baton, Cabaret’s onstage orchestra sounds as good pros while never overpowering unamped vocals.

Cabaret is produced by Sean Soper. Mattie Harris-Lowe scores points for her well-staged fight choreography. Caitlin Kilgore is assistant director. Seira Murakami and Sophia Pesetti are stage managers and Tyler Maegawa-Goeser is technical director.

 For the past dozen years, USC’s Musical Theatre Repertory has more than justified its motto, “Innovative musical theatre, for students, by students.” Correction. Cabaret may have been created by students but it is for everyone who appreciates musical theater at its finest.

Massman Theatre at USC.
www.uscmtr.com

–Steven Stanley
March 22, 2018
Photos: Austin Dalgleish

Tags: Joe Masteroff, Kander & Ebb, Los Angeles Theater Review, Musical Theatre Repertory, USC School Of Dramatic Arts