10%

'We have no troubles here'

The Robinson Players stage ‘Cabaret,’ and it's not a happy show

By Bates College

March 24^th, 2016

A musicaL about happiness?

In mid-March, the Robinson Players brought to the Schaeffer stage Cabaret, a play whose dark social commentary should never be forgotten, even if it’s quite a hoot early on.

“I’m not a huge fan of musicals,” admits Sam James ’17 of Raleigh, N.C., who directed Cabaret for the Robinson Players. “But I see it as less of a performance-driven period piece and more of a timeless, tragic story that confronts the evils of complacency.”

Liza Minnelli, who famously played the female lead, Sally Bowles, in the film version, once said that “people hear ‘Cabaret’ and they think, ‘Oh Christ, it’s a musical about happiness.’” But, of course, it’s not about that at all. “It’s about opinions and politics and survival.”

'I am your host'

The Emcee, as played by Joel Grey in the 1960s stage productions and in the later film version, used to be “impish and sinister,” in the words of the Guardian, while revivals in the 1990s changed all that — the Emcee’s sexuality, his “yobbish licentiousness,” was front and center.

In the Bates production, Brett Ranieri ’16 of West Hartford, Conn., played the Emcee with sexual gusto (and more), and that is the story’s central irony: the Emcee’s “sexuality and humor and charm” can’t stop him from eventually “standing just as naked and alone as everyone else,” says Ranieri.

"So, life is disappointing? Forget it! We have no troubles here!" sings the Emcee.

'trying to hold onto what she knows'

There’s a desperation to how Sally Bowles clings to her world of fun and frolic as the Nazis come to power in 1930s Berlin. But though she’s willfully ignoring the encroaching evil, Sally Bowles is not dim-witted, says Audrey Burns ’17 of Topsham, Maine, who played the character in the Bates production.

“It’s easy to play Sally as stupid. But she’s not stupid. She truly believes life is meant to be enjoyed. She’s trying to hold on to what she knows and how she’s made all her decisions: to be on stage, have fun, enjoy yourself, and enjoy other people.”

"Mama thinks I'm living in a convent, a secluded little convent in the southern part of France," Sally Bowles sings.

the director's notes

“I really wanted to achieve a world where the audience could come into Schaeffer and immediately feel like everything was believable,” says James, the director.

“I used Tom Wingfield’s opening soliloquy in The Glass Menagerie as a guide. He says he will turn back time to give the audience ‘truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion,’ and reminds us that ‘this play is memory,’ and in memory ‘everything seems to happen to music.’”

In turn, says James, “if you allow the mystical quality that comes with memory to support the story, the audience will be more willing to join the cast on this journey into the past.”

Director Sam James ’17 of Raleigh, N.C., adjusts the tie of actor Declan Chu '17 of Winthrop, Maine, who plays Clifford Bradshaw.

'That deep-seated desire'

Burns, a rhetoric and theater major, says she identifies with one aspect of Sally Bowles. “That desire…that deep-seated desire to perform.”

Near the end, when Sally Bowles sings the title song, “Cabaret,” the lyrics take the audience back to England, as Sally recalls her fun-loving friend Elsie, who had died young, “the happiest corpse I’d ever seen.” Sally, breaking down, sings how she remembers her friend would turn to her and say, “What’s good is sitting alone in your room? Come hear the music play. Life is a cabaret.”

“I really understand that about Sally,” says Burns. “I tried to bring that to everything about how I played her.”

Sex. Humor. Deceit.

The actor Alan Cumming, who has played the Emcee in several revivals since the 1990s, said that “you have to remember that the Emcee isn’t really a character. He is really more of a symbol.”

And, Ranieri adds, the Emcee “can’t be a character because he is so much more than a person. He embodies the truth hidden beneath a cloak of deceit.”

Ranieri says that all that “sexuality and humor and charm” are merely a set of “mechanisms to disguise the honesty hiding in the palm of the true ringmaster, someone I don’t even think we know” — but will become apparent by play’s end.

Believing that it's going great

Sally Bowles represents people who were not willing to look ahead at what was coming, “societies in England or America, or the people partying in Berlin,” says Burns.

“We all like to think that if we were in that place, we would not do what Sally Bowles did,” Burns says, “living our lives thinking ‘What’s the point of getting worked up? We’re only here for a lifetime and everything seems to be going great.’”

The tragic truth is that Sally Bowles and the societies she symbolizes “truly and deeply believe that.”

James Erwin '18 of Yarmouth, Maine, plays Max, the owner of the Kit Kat Club.

'it couldn’t please me more'

The stage version features a love story between the apartment landlady, Fraulein Schneider, played by Kelsey Berry ’16 of Hollis, N.H., and a Jewish store owner, Herr Schultz, played by Brennen Malone ’17 of Philadelphia.

While Bates audience members might have seen intentional thematic connections in the casting of Malone, an African American student, in the role of the Jewish store owner, the casting decision was color-blind.

Schultz sings these lines in the song “It Couldn’t Please Me More” after bringing Fraulein Schneider the gift of a pineapple:

“If in your emotion, you begin to sway, went to get some air, or grabbed a chair to keep from fainting dead away, it couldn’t please me more than to see you cling to the pineapple I bring.”

'if you could see her'

In the early productions of the play in the 1960s, a key line in the song “If You Could See Her,” sung by the Emcee, put a fine point on the play’s social commentary. As the Emcee slow-dances with a character dressed in a gorilla suit, the last line of the song is, “If you could see her through my eyes, she wouldn’t look Jewish at all.”

Jewish groups protested, and the line was changed to “She isn’t a meeskite at all,” a Yiddish term to describe an unattractive woman. (The original production had an earlier song called “Meeskite,” so the lyric change would have made some sense to audience members.)

The film and later stage versions reinstated the original line, and that’s what the Schaeffer audience heard.

'It's all starting not to work anymore'

“Sally Bowles believes that life is a performance,” says Burns. “And she believes in the cabaret. She is holding on. It’s a childish and naive belief, and it’s gotten her into trouble before — and it already has again — but she isn’t willing to let go. And she probably won’t let go.

“And where she is right now, and the interactions she’s having with people, it’s all starting not to work anymore, because the shit is about to get real.”

The voice that laughs back

Throughout the show, the audience gets to laugh and giggle along with the antics of the highly sexualized Emcee. “Everyone is laughing at me,” says Ranieri, a biology major and dance minor. By the play’s end, reality sets in.

The Emcee, now wearing the striped uniform of a Nazi concentration camp, welcomes the audience “to the real show,” Ranieri says, “the one that no one wants to watch. In 10 seconds, every Jew and gypsy and Pole and black and disabled and homosexual stands on that stage.”

“There’s just the truth and the terrifying story of how it tried to survive.”

There’s a drum roll, and “when the drum roll breaks, I become the vessel for the voice that laughs back and says, ‘See how easy it was to sleep next to me in truly delicious sin?’ There is no Emcee. There’s just the truth and the terrifying story of how it tried to survive.”

Time to Go

Cast members of the Robinson Players’ production of Cabaret take a bow, including, from left, Tricia Crimmins ’19 (Fraulein Kost), Alex Moskovitz ’16 (Ernst Ludwig), James Erwin ’18 (Max), Audrey Burns ’17 (Sally Bowles), Brett Ranieri ’16 (the Emcee), Declan Chu ’17 (Clifford Bradshaw), Brennen Malone ’17 (Herr Schultz), and Kelsey Berry ’16 (Fraulein Schneider).