The Stage

Cabaret

Published Monday 8 September 2008 at 13:25 by Richard Edmonds

There is an extremely moving moment at the end of this flawed evening.

Clifford Bradshaw (Henry Luxemburg) stands alone on stage with the tacky world of the Berlin cabaret a fast-fading memory. His momentary reflection on what has been a traumatising experience is detached and melancholy. If anything, it says volumes about what might have been in this production had a little more attention been paid to its rough edges and general shapelessness.

The problem with Rufus Norris’ production is that it lacks a sense of place.

Katrina Lindsay’s all-purpose black room, simply does not morph easily into the several different arenas the piece demands. Fraulein Schneider’s lodging house (with so many beds around that it begins to look like a furniture store) is scarcely conjured up by a sliding up-stage door, a naked light bulb - which Frau Schneider would never have countenanced anyway - and a metal staircase.

And did we really need a nude cast to huddle upstage as a knee-jerk memory of the gas chambers?

This show doesn’t need the horrors of Nazidom underlined, that particular horror is implicit when Herr Schultz finds his Jewishness beginning to stalk him, and it’s there every time the Emcee hisses a malign lyric (Wayne Sleep nicely wicked and singing well in camp corset and suspender belt).

The choreography by Javier de Frutos is frequently dull and often flies wide of the mark, abandoning the demands of a musical and replacing them with social documentary.

So the brittle and fast steps we have known for 30 years become something else that has much less impact, where the hard-faced, expressionless air of sexual boredom is exchanged for cluttered partnerings.

Samantha Barks as Sally Bowles does her level best to bring her character to life, but the swinger remains resolutely comatose.

Still, there is hope for development as the show moves into its long tour.

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