Review of Cabaret on Broadway, December 2024

I often go to New York to see shows, as I work in the theater industry myself. Every time I board a bus back up to the city it’s usually for work, and I seize the opportunity to catch a handful of Broadway and Off-Broadway shows whenever I get the chance.

That said, in December 2024, when I am typing this, I had to go up for our work’s holiday party. I arranged a place to stay for four days and booked my tickets. This trip I had an agenda: I wanted to see Adam Lambert in Cabaret, Rachel Zegler in Romeo + Juliet, and I generally wanted to get to Maybe Happy Ending.

This Wednesday was a disappointing one, as I refunded my Romeo + Juliet ticket as Rachel called out. I’m sure the understudy is incredibly talented, but that was such an expensive ticket and I only bought it to see Rachel. I was lucky I was excited to see Adam Lambert in Cabaret that night, and he didn’t call out thankfully.

As you might have read about this production of Cabaret, they gutted the August Wilson Theater and straight up turned it into a replica of a cabaret club. If you can afford seats in the orchestra that are cabaret style, they might directly engage with you during the preshow (there is a preshow) or intermission.

The two mezzanines are standard theater ones, and they’re a bit tight. I was between two larger men who were really mansplaining, so my knees hurt a lot and the guy to my right kept jabbing my side. I was in the East Mezzanine (the top one on the purchase ticket options), and I felt like my seat was ideal. I was in Row O, Seat 5, and I felt like the cast really faced this side more. If you were on the other mezzanine side, you probably would have seen their backs more.

This was such an experience though—let’s get into the review before I start rambling too much.

At the Kit Kat Club in Berlin, romance and strife mirror the political situation in Weimar Germany.

As soon as you walk into this theater, you go down a seedy hallway, then they tape up your phone. No pictures are allowed in the club, and you can see why after you go down another hallway set. They completely renovated this theater into an actual club, and the aesthetics are stunning. I was wandering down the first bar when a troupe came past me dancing with a clarinet.

The preshow even extends to the mezzanine. We had two actors riffing and doing their thing up where I was sitting, and one even stole a guy’s drink and pretended to flirt with him. Then the show actually begins: we’re in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, and our setting is the Kit Kat Club.

The Emcee, who is our master of ceremonies, sets the scene and introduces the major players, including Sally Bowles, one of the Cabaret singers. American writer Cliff enters the scene, creating a ripple when he gets together with Sally after she’s let go from the club.

We also meet his elderly German landlord, who enters an engagement with a Jewish fruit vendor named Herr Schultz. That’s going to become a different problem later on, as the Nazi influence outside begins heavily bleeding into the world of the club.

This is a show that shows how people fall under the grip of ideologies like the Nazis. We begin the show laughing at the Emcee’s jokes, but as it becomes more and more serious, things aren’t as funny as much in the club. Costuming also reflects this conformity, as we no longer see the dancers in their Kit Kat Club costumes; they all wear beige suits, and Sally ends up in one too as she defies Cliff’s urging to leave the country.

Auli'i Cravalho is someone I was very interested in as well. I’ve actually seen her before in the Kennedy Center production of Sunset Boulevard opposite Derek Klena, and I was not impressed with her in that show. I thought she was terribly miscast, so I had my reservations when coming into this showing of Cabaret.

And when I say that I was blown away by her, I mean it. I had low expectations but she was a fantastic Sally Bowles. She’s a character who, by the time we get to the number of “I Don’t Care” is willing to turn her head away from the obvious political situation unfolding in front of us, as she thinks the Nazis won’t impact her life.

The biggest standout was definitely Adam Lambert. I’ve loved him since his American Idol days, but I think this is the perfect role for him. His Emcee slowly becomes more sinister as we see what’s happening outside the walls of Berlin, absorbing the attitudes of the period, and by the time we get to “I Don’t Care” he solidifies a very good performance for me.

Overall Thoughts

This is such a good show! I had never seen Cabaret before, but I was impressed with Lambert and Cravalho, along with the rest of the cast, and thought it was worth the $69 I paid for my mezzanine seat during the TodayTix sale.

It’s also a harrowing one to see in America’s current political climate. The nationalist themes in the character’s songs are more nuanced in the beginning of the show, especially in “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” so if you’re not paying attention to the setting and understand the history of what’s unfolding in front of us, you’re going to miss what’s happening until the one character shows up in a Nazi armband.

And a lot of cabaret singers and workers ended up dead in concentration camps or fled the country—which adds another layer of devastation. Schultz is someone who vehemently denies what’s happening, despite being Jewish, and when he leaves the stage for the final time, insisting nothing will happen to him, we get this sense that this is the end for him.

But wow, this was fantastic. I think the ending monologue by Cliff is going to stick with me for a while. Go see this one if you haven’t already and can afford a ticket or two.

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