Cabaret Analysis

On Saturday, November 11, I attended a performance of Cabaret at Dutchess Community College. This musical is set in Berlin, 1931 Germany pre World War I as the Nazis are rising to power. It takes place in a nightclub, the Kit Kat Klub and revolves around an American writer named Cliff Bradshaw and his relationship with an English cabaret performer, Sally Bowles. The cast features six major characters: Sally Bowles, the headlining British singer at the Kit Kat Klub, the Emcee, or the Master of Ceremonies of the Kit Kat Klub, who is extremely leering and flamboyant, Cliff Bradshaw, an American writer traveling through Berlin, Fräulein Schneider, an older woman who runs the apartment building where Cliff and Sally live, Herr Schultz, an older Jewish shop owner who falls in love with Fräulein Schneider and Ernst Ludwig, a German man who befriends Cliff and is later revealed to be a Nazi (Miller). The musical featured music by John Kander, directed by Hal Prince, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Joe Masteroff. The book was based off of John Van Druten's 1951 play, I Am a Camera, which was adapted from the short novel Goodbye to Berlin (1939) by Christopher Isherwood. (Miller). Historically, the musical Cabaret was written for the stage. In it’s time on Broadway, it was revived three times and was originally

There were book scenes in the show that were also in the original that went along with the story and music. All of the most iconic songs from the original production that could be seen in the original cast album were included in this rendition of Cabaret, which one could appreciate. Though these songs are enjoyable to audiences, they also play an important and symbolic role to the musical itself (Miller). As Miller states, “One of the clever, usually overlooked devices the score uses is connecting songs and characters through introductions”