Cabaret by Reboot Theatre Company

I hear the first few notes of Wilkommen, so iconic and thrilling. I know I’m in for a treat.

Reboot Theatre Company’s Cabaret pulls it off. The score is loaded with can’t-miss songs. The cast comes through on one after another.

Heather Refvem as Sally Bowles delivers on the big numbers, Maybe This Time and Cabaret. June Apollo Johns as the Emcee is delightfully silly, particularly on Two Ladies and If You Could See Her.

But two other songs featuring Fraulein Schneider (Michelle Blackmon) and Herr Schultz (Ellen Dessler-Smith) bring the show home, with their mixture of beauty and sadness.

It Couldn't Please Me More is the one where the humble fruit vendor, Herr Schultz woos equally humble boarding house manager Fraulein Schneider by giving her a gift of a pineapple. It’s rare, exotic and represents pure delight. They never enjoy it, though. Schneider sings,

Then we shall leave it here
Not to eat, but see

On Married, Blackmon and Dessler-Smith are joined by Alexei Cifrese as Fraulein Kost and the three make a nice, bittersweet harmony as they sing about how “somebody wonderful married me,” while everyone but them knows how it’s going to end.

And the end is grim. I’ve seen Cabaret twice: the film version a million years ago and the show put on by the Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society in 2019 at 12th Avenue Arts. I don’t remember the ending hitting so hard. As I recall, (though I could be misremembering) in the G&S version, the Emcee ends the show in a striped prisoner’s uniform. Per Wikipedia, “the final shot of the film shows the cabaret's audience is dominated by uniformed Nazis.”

In Reboot’s version, the Kit Kat Dancers are on stage as death camp prisoners while the Emcee sings the reprise of Wilkommen. It’s stark, gutting, seeing the formerly wild and carefree dancers in this place, being “welcomed” with the same song that opened the show. It doesn’t miss.

Cabaret plays through May 14 at Theatre Off Jackson. Info and tickets here:

https://reboot.booktix.com/view/2/d102b9d2203123be/ 

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