Audiences will travel back in time to 1930s Berlin as Belfast's MAC theatre is transformed into the infamous Kit Kat Club as part of immersive night of theatre in a new production of the award-winning musical Cabaret. Jenny Lee finds out more
SEDUCTIVE, shocking and dangerous in equal measure, Cabaret changed the idea of what a musical comedy could be when it first strutted onto Broadway in 1966.
Now local audiences can be plunged straight into the decadent but decaying world of 1930s Berlin with a new co-production between Belfast theatre company Bruiser and the city's MAC theatre.
Based on Christopher Isherwood's The Berlin Stories, the show follows the romance between cabaret performer Sally Bowles and young American writer Cliff Bradshaw in the unlikely setting of the Kit Kat Club during the rise of Nazism, with the cabaret itself a metaphor for Weimar Germany. Talks about staging the musical in Belfast have been ongoing for four years. "We are delighted to get the rights to stage the show. It's been on the cards but because of the revival in Broadway and London it clashed a few years ago. So I'm delighted we finally made it work," Bruiser's creative director Lisa May, who directs the show, says.
Cabaret is the perfect example of a concept musical where the show's metaphor or statement is more important than the actual narrative. "The dramatic strength of Cabaret rests on the effectiveness of the cabaret metaphor - the libidinous, raunchy decadence offers the Kit Kat Club customers temporary respite from the restraints of daily life," May explains. "The permissive atmosphere is innocuous until Nazi propaganda creeps into the Kit Kat stage show. Collectively the cabaret songs reflect the moral decline in Germany, starting out as risque diversions but gradually becoming racist political propaganda."
The audience are complicit participants in the action. The seating in the MAC auditorium has been retracted and audience will be seated at tables as if they are sitting in the Kit Kat Club enjoying the live music and dancing.
They can even have a drink and charcuterie boards during the show. Period lighting will add to the atmosphere as will the use of haze machines and electronic cigarettes.
Surely this will this lead to a more lively audience, I suggest. "I'd like to think so," May laughs. Fishnets, shocking and feathers will feature heavily in vintage costumes - so just how risque is the show? "It's decadent. There was a huge sexual boom at that time so it would be wrong for us to avoid that.There is no nudity, although there is quite a bit of flesh, and the actors are very free with each other," May says.
Amid the spectacle and beloved hits such as Maybe This Time, the musical has the capacity to question audiences about what they would do if they were in the character's situation and also reflect upon our modern day society. "At first we enjoy the entertainment but the burlesque soon turns to grotesque and we don't know how to react. It questions how Nazism and the Holocaust could have happened at all, and tragically, we don't have to look very far to see that we haven't travelled too far from Weimar Germany.
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