Cabaret

Cabaret (1966), a musical play by Joe Masteroff (book), John Kander (music), Fred Ebb (lyrics). [Broadhurst Theatre, 1,165 perf.; Tony, NYDCC Awards.] At the sleazy Kit Kat Klub the effete Master of Ceremonies ( Joel Grey) bids one and all “Willkommen” to the tumultuous Berlin of the Weimar Republic, where Cliff Bradshaw ( Bert Convy), a young American writer, strikes up a series of foredoomed relationships. One is with his landlady, Frau Schneider ( Lotte Lenya), who lives in daydreams of a probably imaginary past and who is courted by a Jewish boarder, Herr Schultz ( Jack Gilford). Another is with Ernst Ludwig ( Edward Winter), whose main preoccupation is smuggling in funds for the Nazis. However, Cliff becomes closest to Sally Bowles ( Jill Haworth), an attractive English girl working as an entertainer in the club. But neither the amoral and hedonistic times nor Sally's unstable charms provide an anchor for the romance, so Cliff elects to leave Germany. A musical redaction of I Am a Camera, the Hal Prince–produced‐directed musical employed the nightclub as a frame for the action and the club's M.C. as its Elizabethan prologue, Greek chorus, and contemporary colorist. Walter Kerr noted in the Times, “Instead of putting the narrative first . . . it pops the painted clown and gartered girls directly into our faces, making them, in effect, a brilliantly glazed window . . . through which we can perceive the people and the emotional pattern of the plot.” The musical was revived successfully on Broadway in 1987 and a 1998 revival ran more than five years. Joe MASTEROFF (b. 1919) was born in Philadelphia, educated at Temple University, and began his theatre career as an actor then as assistant to Howard Lindsay. He made his playwriting debut with The Warm Peninsula (1959) and wrote his first libretto for She Loves Me (1963). After Cabaret, Masteroff scripted the musicals 70, Girls, 70 (1971), and Six Wives (1992).