Life isn’t just a cabaret, old chum, it’s a downright dazzling circus in The Nocturne Theatre Company’s stunningly reimagined in-the-round revival of the Kander and Ebb masterpiece 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 (Connor Bullock) makes the acquaintance of Ernst Ludwig (Laurent Ziliani), the outgoing Berliner who will introduce him to lodgings run by seen-it-all Fräulein Schneider (Caitlin McCormick) and, more importantly, to Berlin’s pansexual nightlife as overseen by an all-seeing, all-knowing Emcee (Renee Cohen).

Kit Kat Klub star Sally Bowles (Kayla Fast) 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 (J.D. Wallis), 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.

Few musicals have lent themselves to reconception as consistently as Cabaret has since Harold Prince first directed it on Broadway in 1966, most notably in Sam Mendes’s 1998 revival which eschewed glamour and glitz for a German Expressionist vision of darkness and depravity, Joel Grey’s tuxedo-clad Emcee replaced by Alan Cumming’s heavily lipsticked, eye-shadowed, torso-flaunting Master Of Ceremonies, not to mention the recent West End revival now dividing audiences on Broadway.

In his fifth consecutive directorial gig at Nocturne since December’s Madame Scrooge, director Justin Meyer signals from the get-go (indeed from the moment we look up from our seats to discover ourselves under a red-and-white-striped circus big top), that this latest Cabaret will be unlike any other. (It’s certainly unique among the fifteen different productions I’ve now seen.)

And just wait until Master of Ceremonies Renee Cohen emerges centerstage from a gargantuan box surrounded by Kit Kat Girls Frenchie (Sarah Louise), Fritzie (Jett LaFever), Lulu (Madison Mi Hwa Oliver), Rosie (Rachel Fictum), and Texas (Capone Walker) soon to be joined by Kit Kat Boys Bobby (Michalis Schinas), Herman (Jewell Valentin), and Victor (Jordan Taylor) in feats of aerialist derring-do, and you’ll realize that the Cabaret we’ve been invited to by Cohen’s gender-flipped Emcee resembles nothing so much as a scaled-down version of The Greatest Show On Earth.

It’s a circus motif that’s continued throughout the show in production number after production number (with bits of Busby Berkeley thrown in in a show-stopping “Money”) thanks to Melissa Meyer’s endlessly imaginative choreography.

Meanwhile, back in the “real world” outside the Kit Kat Klub, two very different couples play out doomed love stories as Nazism overtakes Germany, with moments of levity thrown in as Cliff’s across-the-hall neighbor Fraulein Kost (LeFever) welcomes “nephew” after “nephew” for some rent-by-the-hour sexual frolic and Herr Schultz romances Fraulein Schneider with delicacies from his fruit shop that couldn’t please her more.

 A sensational Cohen now adds Cabaret’s Emcee to her long list of SoCal musical theater credits, a groundbreaking star turn as fearless as it is fabulous, and she is matched every step of the way by Fast’s sultry, scintillating Sally, whose eleventh-hour rendition of the musical’s title song is as gut-wrenching a showstopper as showstoppers get.

Bullock’s handsome, heartbreaking, ultimately heartbroken Cliff is another standout as are Wallis’s endearing Herr Schultz and an aged-up McCormick’s powerful, pragmatic Fraulein Schneider, with terrific supporting turns delivered by Ziliani as the initially sympathetic Ernst (accent on initially) and a big-voiced LeFever as the sexy, saucy Fraulein Kost.

Kit Kat Klub entertainers Fictum, Louise, Oliver, Schinas, Taylor, Valentin, and Walker sing and dance to stunning effect in a fantastical array of Tanya Cyr-designed costumes that give this Cabaret a look unlike any other you’ve seen before, backed by musical director Chris Wade and a thrillingly not prerecorded live band made up of Wade on keyboards, Eddie Bonilla on tuba and trombone, Eddy Barco on drums, and JP Mora on alto sax, clarinet, flute, and trumpet.

Last but not least, Rodrigo Garcia plays Gorilla to Cohen’s smitten Emcee in “If You Could See Her.”

Director Meyer doubles ingeniously as scenic designer, and though his saturated lighting design suits this Cabaret to a T, it too often leaves cast members’ solos and duets in the shadows when they deserve a follow spot to truly stand out.

Matt Merline’s sound engineering is mostly effective, though solo vocals can get drowned out by the band.

Ernie Peiffer and dance captain Schinas are assistant choreographers. Micah Delhauer is stage manager.

Few musicals offer a director more opportunities to create something new and different than Cabaret, and as he’s now done five shows in a row, Justin Meyer proves himself more than up to the challenge in this most thrillingly reinvented of revivals.

The Nocturne Theatre, 324 N. Orange St., Glendale.
www.TheNocturneTheatre.com

–Steven Stanley
June 22, 2024

Tags: Fred Ebb, Joe Masteroff, John Kander, Los Angeles Theater Review, The Nocturne Theatre