The Power Behind the Characters of Cabaret

The first time I watched Cabaret was in the dregs of the COVID-19 pandemic, my laundry sat unfinished behind me and a bowl of cereal I hadn’t finished that morning was begging to be taken off of my desk. Much of my time was wasted scrolling through an endless stream of YouTube videos, and on this particular day, I had stumbled across a recording of the 1993 Sam Mendes’ directed London revival of Cabaret. By the time the penultimate and titular song of the musical had played, the malaise that had strapped me to my chair was long gone. As Alan Cumming’s Emcee asked me where my troubles were now I found myself at a loss. The things that may have troubled me before felt so small–so far away that there was a guilt in thinking they mattered. This is the power of Cabaret–the reason that since it debuted in 1966 it has seen nine revivals on Broadway and the West End and saw its adaptation to film in 1972, and why now more than ever it must be seen.

There isn’t a main character in Cabaret per se but the Kit Kat Club’s leading lady Sally Bowles makes a strong case. She is a glamorous centerpiece in the Berlin nightclub scene and the epitome of the naivety and self-interest that stood by for the Nazi rise to power. Being the “Toast of Mayfair,” Sally’s English accent is strong and doesn’t make for a typical Broadway sound. This is part of her effect though. She’s a projection of the less proper parts of Berlin life. She’s sexualized, as is the Emcee, to lay bare the grittiness and excess that entices her–as well as to seduce the audience into a false familiarity. Sally’s story is not a criticism of vanity, however, nor is it entirely an attack on ignorance. It’s a potently human tragedy. Sally is a victim of the world around her and as the musical progresses her gilded shell falls away. The songs Maybe This Time and Cabaret show us a woman who’s been beaten by a life that has rejected her and ultimately forced her to give up. Tragedy is most often sympathetic and Sally Bowles is no exception. By the end of the musical though, our sympathy for her is questioned. Sally is not stupid nor ignorant. She is very aware of what is at stake in Germany, but she actively chooses to ignore it. Sally chooses to relish in what little time she has left as a queen because as she puts it “cradle to tomb isn’t that long a stay.” Sally’s choice is one of desperation. To her, the world is ending and she only has so much time to make her life worth it so she doesn’t act. 

Cliff Bradshaw, whose perspective much of the show is told through, is yet another muddled character. At times he projects the nobility Americans attributed to himself following WWII, standing up valiantly to the Nazis. At other times though, his cowardice bleeds through. Cliff unknowingly delivers Nazi contraband for a small amount of money, he slaps Sally when he learns she’s had an abortion, and he leaves Berlin with nothing to show. Cliff in some ways acts as a prophet of doom who, in trying to raise alarm for what’s to come, has done damage himself. Cliff’s sexuality is also brought into question; something which is often misunderstood. Though sexuality is a vitally important topic today, it really has nothing to do with this musical. Cliff’s sexuality acts as an expression of ambiguity in his character. He’s unsure and unable to act as much of the world felt at the time. Despite Cliff’s pitfalls, his perspective asks the most important question of the musical; would you be a bystander or would you act?

The arc of Herr Schultz and Fraulein Schneider is the realest and most affecting piece of the musical. Jewish fruit salesman Herr Schultz finds himself inexorably in love with his landlord, Fraulein Schneider. It Couldn’t Please Me More provides the loveliest moment of the musical, with the pair in a songbird-like duet over a pineapple.Herr Schultz has gifted Fraulein Schneider. The two agree to be married but Fraulein Schneider’s doubts in marrying a Jewish man slowly come to the fore. Eventually, in the heartbreaking What Would You Do? Fraulein Schneider decides that their marriage cannot be. To the audience this decision feels unthinkable, they should have faced what was to come for their love. For the proud and somewhat aged Germans that Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz are, leaving is not an option and death shouldn’t be either. It is not revealed what happens to Herr Schultz but he is left hoping for the Germany he loves to do the right thing as he adamantly says, he is a German too.

The Emcee of the Kit Kat Club both is and isn’t. He acts as the narrator of the story. If you don’t identify with the characters he tells you in a dramatized way what you’re meant to be getting. The Emcee is strongly sexualized to entice the audience similarly to the way Sally Bowles does but to an extreme, meant to entertain. The Emcee is still an endearing character, intended to pull you in so he can punch you in the throat. That feeling of gasping for air is felt in the urgency and the melodrama of the songs he sings. Most notably in If You Could See Her and Money when he makes incredibly obvious observations but observations people refuse to make. He appears in Nazi attire and concentration camp attire alike as he ties the stories together. The Emcee makes Cabaret what it is by treating the audience like children– demeaning them and assuming the least because as we see with Sally Bowles the least is often what we refuse to acknowledge.

Cabaret is largely character-driven as demonstrated earlier. However, the Kit Kat Club serves its own purpose. Book writer Joe Masteroff and songwriting duo Kander and Ebb use the characters to search within your deepest emotions and prod at your hair. They use the Kit Kat Club to wake you up though. Productions of Cabaret, such as the one currently running on Broadway, often transform theaters into the club itself because they want to truly transport you to 1930s Berlin. The club makes the audience complicit in the things it witnesses; it makes Sally Bowles’cry for help real, it makes the Emcee’s indictment of morals directed at the audience and not the past. Perhaps the most effective thing that multiple productions of Cabaret and the film have done is include mirrors within the design of the club. When the show crashes to an end and you’re left asking yourself what right you have to feel troubled, you’re forced to look at yourself as well and feel the vulnerability of being complicit.

My favorite line of the musical comes as Cliff’s last spoken line, “It was the end of the world and I was dancing with Sally Bowles and we were both fast asleep.” As white nationalism, xenophobia, transphobia, fascism, and many other undesirable things are on the rise at home in the United States and abroad, far too many people find themselves asleep like Sally Bowles. If you haven’t seen Cabaret, watch it in any way you can and I hope it has the effect on you that it did on me.