Cabaret is an American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and a book by Joe Masteroff. It is based on the play I Am a Camera by John Van Druten, which premiered in 1951, and which in turn was based on the 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood.
Set in 1929–1930 Berlin during the twilight of the Jazz Age as the Nazis rise to power, the musical focuses on the hedonistic nightlife at the seedy Kit Kat Klub and revolves around American writer Clifford Bradshaw's relations with English cabaret performer Sally Bowles. A subplot involves the doomed romance between German boarding house owner Fräulein Schneider and her elderly suitor Herr Schultz, a Jewish fruit vendor. Overseeing the action is the master of ceremonies at the Kit Kat Klub, and the club itself serves as a metaphor for ominous political developments in late Weimar Germany.
The original Broadway production opened on November 20, 1966, at the Broadhurst Theatre in New York City and became a box office hit that ran for 1,166 performances. The production won eight Tony Awards and inspired numerous subsequent productions around the world, including the 1968 West End debut, as well as the 1972 film adaptation.
Background Historical basis
The events depicted in the 1966 musical are derived from Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical tales of his colorful escapades in the Weimar Republic. In 1929, Isherwood visited Weimar-era Berlin during the final months of the Golden Twenties.: In March 1929, Isherwood joined W. H. Auden in Berlin. Impressed by the city, Isherwood returned again soon after and stayed for several years until the rise of the Nazis. He relocated to Berlin to avail himself of boy prostitutes and to enjoy the city's orgiastic Jazz Age cabarets.: Isherwood frequented "the boy-bars in Berlin in the late years of the Weimar Republic.... [He] discovered a world utterly different from the repressive English one he disliked, and with it, the excitements of sex and new subject matter." He socialized with a coterie of gay writers that included Stephen Spender, Paul Bowles, and W.H. Auden. At the time, Isherwood viewed the rise of Nazism in Germany with political indifference and instead focused on writing a novel.: "The real Isherwood... [was] the least political of the so-called Auden group, [and] Isherwood was always guided by his personal motivations rather than by abstract ideas.": Isherwood was a "self-indulgent upper middle-class foreign tourist" who was "a good deal less dedicated to political passion than the legend has had it."
In Berlin, Isherwood shared modest lodgings with 19-year-old British flapper Jean Ross, an aspiring film actress who earned her living as a chanteuse in lesbian bars and second-rate cabarets.: "Jean Ross, whom [Isherwood] had met in Berlin as one of his fellow-lodgers in the Nollendorfstrasse for a time, when she was earning her living as a (not very remarkable) singer in a second-rate cabaret." While room-mates at Nollendorfstrasse 17 in Schöneberg,: "Jean moved into a room in the Nollendorfstrasse flat after she met Christopher, early in 1931." a 27-year-old Isherwood settled into a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old German boy,: "...a sixteen-year-old Berliner named Heinz Neddermeyer... Isherwood realized that he 'had found someone emotionally innocent, entirely vulnerable and uncritical, whom he could protect and cherish as his very own.' In other words, he had found the person for whom he had been looking in all his relationships with adolescents." and Ross became pregnant after engaging in a series of sexual liaisons. She believed the father of the child to be jazz pianist and later film actor Peter van Eyck.: "An affair with a Jewish musician called Götz von Eick, who subsequently became an actor in Hollywood under the name Peter van Eyck, led to her becoming pregnant, and she nearly died after an abortion."
As a favor to Ross, Isherwood pretended to be her heterosexual lover in order to facilitate an abortion. Ross nearly died from the procedure due to the doctor's incompetence. Visiting Ross during her recovery in a Berlin hospital, Isherwood perceived hostility from the hospital staff who believed that he had forced her to undergo the abortion. These events inspired Isherwood to write his 1937 novella Sally Bowles, in which the abortion serves as the narrative climax.: "The abortion is a turning point in the narrator's relationship with Sally and also in his relationship to Berlin and to his writing".
While Ross recovered from the botched abortion, the political situation rapidly deteriorated in Weimar Germany as the incipient Nazi Party grew stronger day by day. "There was a sensation of doom to be felt in the Berlin streets", Stephen Spender recalled.: In contrast to Stephen Spender's prescient realization of impending doom, Isherwood near the end of January 1933 "was complaining somewhat unpresciently to Spender that situation in Germany seemed 'very dull.'" As Berlin's daily scenes increasingly featured "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right", Isherwood, Ross, Spender, and other British nationals realized that they must leave the politically volatile country as soon as possible.: "Isherwood recognized that he could not remain in Berlin much longer..."
Two weeks after the Enabling Act cemented Adolf Hitler's dictatorship, Isherwood fled Germany on May 13, 1933.: Commenting on these dramatic change of events in Germany, Isherwood wrote to a friend that roving Nazi gangs could now murder anyone with impunity, and "it is illegal to offer any resistance". Afterwards, the Nazis shuttered most of Berlin's seedy cabarets, and many of Isherwood's cabaret acquaintances fled abroad or perished in concentration camps. These events served as the genesis for Isherwood's Berlin stories. In 1951, playwright John Van Druten adapted Isherwood's 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin into the Broadway play I Am a Camera which in turn became a 1955 film starring Laurence Harvey and Julie Harris.
Musical development
In early 1963, producer David Black commissioned English composer and lyricist Sandy Wilson to undertake a musical adaptation of Van Druten's 1951 play I Am a Camera. Black hoped that singer Julie Andrews would agree to star in the adaptation, but Andrews' manager refused to allow her to accept the role of Sally Bowles due to the character's immorality.: "David Black, a producer, had commissioned the show and sparked the interest of Julie Andrews, but the star's manager refused Andrews... to play such a part as Sally Bowles". By the time Wilson completed his work, however, Black's option on both the 1951 Van Druten play and its source material by Isherwood had lapsed and been acquired by rival Broadway producer Harold Prince. Prince wished to create a gritty adaptation of Isherwood's stories that drew parallels between the spiritual bankruptcy of Germany in the 1920s and contemporary social problems in the United States at a time "when the struggle for civil rights for black Americans was heating up as a result of nonviolent but bold demonstrations being held in the Deep South."
Prince hired playwright Joe Masteroff to work on the adaptation. Both men believed that Wilson's score failed to capture the carefree hedonism of the Jazz Age in late 1920s Berlin. They wanted a score that "evoked the Berlin of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya." Consequently, Prince invited the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb to join the project. Kander and Ebb envisioned the work as a dramatic play preceded by a prologue of songs describing the Berlin atmosphere from various points of view. As the composers distributed the songs between scenes, they realized the story could be told in the structure of a more traditional book musical, and they replaced several songs with tunes more relevant to the plot.
For the musical adaptation, playwright Joe Masteroff significantly altered Isherwood's original characters. He transformed the English protagonist into an American writer named Clifford Bradshaw; the antisemitic landlady became a tolerant woman with a Jewish beau who owned a fruit store; they cut various supporting characters and added new characters such as the Nazi smuggler Ernst Ludwig for dramatic purposes. The musical ultimately expressed two stories in one: the first, a revue centered on the decadence of the Kit Kat Klub, for which Hal Prince created the Master of Ceremonies (Emcee) character played by Joel Grey; the second, a story set in the society outside the club, thus juxtaposing the lives of the characters based on Isherwood's real-life associates and acquaintances with the seedy club.
In fall 1966, the musical entered rehearsals. After viewing one of the last rehearsals before the company headed to Boston for the pre-Broadway run, Prince's friend Jerome Robbins suggested cutting the songs outside the cabaret, but Prince ignored his advice. In Boston, lead actress Jill Haworth struggled with her characterization of Sally Bowles. Critics thought Sally's blonde hair and white dress suggested a debutante at a senior prom instead of a cabaret singer, so Sally became a brunette before the show opened on Broadway.
Prince staged the show in an unusual way for the time. As the audience entered the theater, they saw the curtain raised, exposing a stage with only a large mirror that reflected the auditorium.: "There was no question that the single greatest element in the design was the giant mirror." Instead of an overture, a drum roll and cymbal crash introduced the opening number. The show mixed dialogue scenes with expository songs and standalone cabaret numbers that provided social commentary. This innovative concept initially surprised audiences. Over time, they discerned the distinction between the two and appreciated the rationale behind them.
Synopsis Act I
At the twilight of the Jazz Age in Berlin, the incipient Nazi Party is growing stronger. The Kit Kat Klub is a seedy cabaret – a place of decadent celebration. The club's Master of Ceremonies (Emcee), together with the cabaret girls and waiters, warms up the audience ("Willkommen"). Meanwhile, a young American writer named Clifford Bradshaw arrives via a railway train in Berlin. He has journeyed to the city to work on a new novel. Cliff encounters Ernst Ludwig, a German smuggler who offers him black market work and recommends a boarding house. At the boarding house, the proprietress Fräulein Schneider offers Cliff a room for one hundred reichsmarks, but he can only pay fifty. After a brief debate, she relents and allows Cliff to live there for fifty marks. Fräulein Schneider observes that she has learned to take whatever life offers ("So What?").
When Cliff visits the Kit Kat Klub, the Emcee introduces an English chanteuse, Sally Bowles, who performs a flirtatious number ("Don't Tell Mama"). Afterward, she asks Cliff to recite poetry for her, and he recites Ernest Thayer's mock-heroic poem "Casey at the Bat". Cliff offers to escort Sally home, but she says that her boyfriend Max, the club's owner, is too jealous. Sally performs her final number at the Kit Kat Klub aided by a female ensemble of jazz babies ("Mein Herr"). The cabaret ensemble performs a song and dance, calling each other on inter-table phones and inviting each other for dances and drinks ("The Telephone Song").