Mediacontact Review - Cabaret at the Gaiety
27 October 09

Cabaret the musical, recently opened in Dublin's Gaiety theatre for 2 weeks of dazzle and dance, and on a frosty evening last week, a few of us wrapped up and went along to check it out.

The show got off to a rousing start with 'Willkomen' led by our master of ceremonies for the night 'Emcee' who was suitably creepy, sinister and funny all at once.

The scene was set for us - a raunchy cabaret club called 'The Kit Kat Club in 1931 Berlin - gritty, gaudy, decadent, and full of razmatazz. Here, life is a cabaret and we are invited to join in the fun, seedy and all as it is.
Truth be told I wasn't prepared for the sauciness of it all. In the Kit Kat Club it was all bums, tums, provocative dancing and plenty of innuendo as both girls and boys strutted their stuff on the stage like 'Kit Kat Kittens'.

The story of Cabaret is dark, sad and often disturbing. In 1931 Berlin, Nazism was on the rise and life was beginning to change for the worse.

There was an audible gasp from the audience when Emcee took off Ernst's coat at the engagement party of Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz , to dramatically reveal a Nazi armband. Ernst was initially a friendly character but became a threatening presence throughout as we learned of his Nazi connections.

A horrifiying scene came at the very end when the curtain fell to reveal a group of people, naked and crouching together, an indication of what was to come for the Jews in the gas chambers of the concentration camps.

It was the same members of the cast that were the Kit Kat Club performers earlier. Their nudity was once saucy and entertaining, here it was shockingly vulnerable and disturbing.

Overall I loved the colourful costumes, the German accents, the racy choreography, and of course the excellent songs. And I also felt sad thinking about the violence and poverty that was to come. It ended on the song it began with, 'Willkomen', but this time there was a foreboding sense to the slow beat.

Emcee was the best character of the night for me, and he closed the show with his signature wicked look as he wished us all "Auf Wiedersehen... à bientôt".

Evelyn Cullen