In “Tomorrow Belongs To Me” the Nazi anthem is sung initially by The EmCee and the circling two foot high mannequins are, like the Antony Gormley statues, identical models of a blonde haired, brown suited, cleaned up EmCee. Can everyone have become a Nazi including the man who sings the satirical Gorilla song? Is this the Aryan model eugenics is aimed at producing?
Rather than the charismatic Sally played in the film by Liza Minelli, it has become the fashion to emphasize Sally Bowles’s ordinariness, her lack of talent, her lack of beauty and her lack of taste. And in her last rendition of the song “Cabaret”, it is as if she knows it. Where is the self deluding girl who turns down Clifford’s offer of marriage because of her career? Instead we have a girl who is almost brain dead as she belts out the song as if drugged beyond all feeling. She wears the extra large demob suit, again a negation of her sexuality.
I think Rebecca Frecknall’s take on Cabaret is to show how easily Fascism encompasses the nation but by losing Nazis in uniform she also loses some of the more sinister fascist implications of this unstable era of galloping inflation and unemployment. As the whole cast become clones of Eddie Redmayne’s EmCee conversion we are reminded of the danger of Fascism and the responsibility of each and every one of us to reject it.
That said, Cabaret is the best of immersive experiences in its Kit Kat Club setting.