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Great Lakes Theater's 'Cabaret' a frantic, uneven affair

26.09.11

One telling sign of how Great Lakes perceives "Cabaret" can be discerned even before the seamy Master of Ceremonies bursts on the scene singing "Willkommen." The program lists the work's book writer, Joe Masteroff, in boldface beneath the title, as it rightly does William Shakespeare pages later under "The Taming of the Shrew," the company's next production. But "Cabaret" composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb are credited in small type three lines beneath Masteroffs name.

So it may be no surprise that Great Lakes does only intermittent justice to the prime Kander-Ebb score, now a crazy quilt of songs cobbled together from the various versions. The beauty of the score -- and the show itself -- is the juxtaposition of a world on the verge of ruin with cabaret numbers that provide biting social commentary, a la Brecht-Weill. (For the real Brechtian thing, check out Cleveland Play House's "The Life of Galileo" around the corner at the Allen Theatre.)

As conceived by Mendes and Marshall and re-created for Great Lakes by director Victoria Bussert and choreographer Gregory Daniels with a surfeit of Fosse-esque pelvic activity, the production is set in the Kit Kat Club, with handfuls of audience members seated at tables near the front of the stage. Jeff Herrmann's unit set holds three doors, circular staircases and a fine small orchestra at the top.

Source: Plain Dealer (blog)