The Wake

The stage is full of them; writhing bodies mobbed by sexual energy. Heads are smothered in breasts, legs are flailing, and partners are swapping, each empty soul beckoning an invisible audience from any grim outside tragedies into their seedy underworld of hedonistic pleasure and delicious debauchery.

It is not until the stage manager halts the singing and dancing to give notes that these assorted riffraff become University students once again, merely actors and actresses taking a break from their rehearsal of Cabaret, the closer for the University Theatre’s 75:20 Mainstage season. But when things are in motion and attention is held, you get the idea: Visits to the nightclubs of 1930s Germany were as fantastical an escape from real-life horrors as was humanly possible.

“We’re here to entertain you, but you must pay attention,” instructs Tony Award-winning director Barbra Berlovitz. Cabaret is her latest production, and marks the former University Theatre actress’ return to teach a very important history lesson—one of acute sensitivity to the past, present, and future.

“I wanted to look at things thematically, because Cabaret is a warning piece of sorts,” she explains. “These situations shouldn’t be ignored or they’ll happen again.”

“You are at the mercy of what you are watching, and it certainly can be applied to modern situations,” cast member Jairus Abts agrees.

Written by the notorious duo Kander and Ebb, who brought the sex and scandal of Chicago to Broadway, Cabaret is, at first, a fantastical but ultimately tragic exposure of Berlin nightlife during the rise of the Nazi regime. It details the relationships between two couples in this time of political tension: the Kit Kat Klub’s beautiful, boozing star attraction Sally Bowles (Sabrina Crews) and the seduced American writer Cliff Bradshaw (Ryan Lear); Cliff’s buttoned-up landlord Fraulein Schneider (Maria Effertz) and her kind Jewish tenant Herr Schultz (Gabe Steinberg). A magnetically twisted Master of Ceremonies (Abts) and his troupe of performers musically narrate their trials and tribulations with show-stopping numbers all at once comical, erotic, and devastating.

“I’m trying not to think of this as 75:20’s big finish because then I wouldn’t be able to get anything done,” Berlovitz laughs. “I’m proceeding with this as with any show, as something that relates to the world we live in now. Obviously the music and the dancing of Cabaret are always spectacular, but there are a lot of correlations to reality.”

Berlovitz’s visions for Cabaret are hardly Hollywood, and she instead portrays the Kit Kat Klub as a dirty, brutal nightspot filled with lowlifes. “This is not the Liza Minnelli story,” she jokes, referring to the 1972 film that customarily defines the role. “Minnelli’s performance was so specific to that version. When I research for a production, I go straight to the sources.” To prepare for Cabaret, Berlovitz immersed herself the book The Berlin Stories and the film I Am A Camera, extensively studying first-hand accounts of the events in Germany at the time.

Despite her research, however, Berlovitz has her limits. “There are no completely new ideas. At some point all that has to be put aside and I have to seize what is here on this stage with these individuals.”

The character of Sally Bowles strikes a particular chord. “In a way, Sally exemplifies what a lot of people were doing. She wants to go beautiful and young because she can’t look a long life in the face. She’s always running,” says Berlovitz, though she recognizes some merit to such a tragic character. “Sally is someone you would definitely want as a friend. She walks into a room and everything is much more fun, however temporarily,” she adds. “And our Sally, she’s great.”

The Sally who Berlovitz speaks so highly of is freshman Sabrina Crews, who stood out amongst 150-some students hoping to be cast as Bowles. Crews, who was talked into auditioning by her father, admits to feeling a bit of initial intimidation in her first University production. “But working with everyone is motivational because they’re all so passionate,” she says.
Crews underwent research similar to Berlovitz’s, and decided on an unconventional interpretation. “In I Am A Camera, Sally is depicted as quite young, and you’re given more insight on her character. I wanted to convey her inexperience because I think deep inside she’s really just a scared little girl.”

Abts asked questions to get answers when it came to developing his own character. “I had to consider what the role of the MC was, what his job entailed, how he fit into society and history, and ultimately, what was going on around him,” he explains. “It has definitely been a process.”

No one ever said keeping things authentic was going to be simple. Despite the stress of cramped scheduling, musical director David Saffert praises both his 9-piece cabaret band and the fast-paced direction of Berlovitz. “I don’t get to actually work with the band until a week from opening night,” he laughs. “But Barbara and I are on the same wavelength. We both have a sense of the necessity of drama within the music.”

“It’s not completely smoothed and polished,” Saffert adds. “The music of Cabaret fascinates me because it’s so rhythmically dark and reflecting of the past—very quirky, very real. You’ll hear each instrument individually, just as you would the singers. It’s raunchy and powerful, not some beautiful, sterile choir.”

After all, with a show rooted in such gritty reality as Cabaret, there must be all the blissful perfections and harsh imperfections of the era and its characterizations, or nothing.

Cabaret opens April 20 and closes April 29, 2006 at the Rarig Center on the University of Minnesota West Bank. For ticket information, call (612) 624-2345.