Cabaret (musical)

Historical basis The events depicted in the 1966 musical are derived from Anglo-American writer Christopher Isherwood's autobiographical tales of his colorful escapades in the Weimar Republic. In 1929, Isherwood visited Weimar-era Berlin during the final months of the Golden Twenties. He relocated to Berlin to avail himself of boy prostitutes and to enjoy the city's orgiastic Jazz Age cabarets. He socialized with a coterie of gay writers that included Stephen Spender, Paul Bowles, and W.H. Auden. At the time, Isherwood viewed the rise of Nazism in Germany with political indifference and instead focused on writing a novel. In Berlin, Isherwood shared modest lodgings with 19-year-old British flapper Jean Ross, an aspiring film actress who earned her living as a chanteuse in lesbian bars and second-rate cabarets. While room-mates at Nollendorfstrasse 17 in Schöneberg, a 27-year-old Isherwood settled into a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old German boy, and Ross became pregnant after engaging in a series of sexual liaisons. She believed the father of the child to be jazz pianist and later film actor Peter van Eyck. As a favor to Ross, Isherwood pretended to be her heterosexual impregnator in order to facilitate an abortion. Ross nearly died from the procedure due to the doctor's incompetence. While Ross recovered from the botched abortion, the political situation rapidly deteriorated in Weimar Germany as the incipient Nazi Party grew stronger day by day. "There was a sensation of doom to be felt in the Berlin streets", Stephen Spender recalled. As Berlin's daily scenes increasingly featured "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right", Isherwood, Ross, Spender, and other British nationals realized that they must leave the politically volatile country as soon as possible. Two weeks after the Enabling Act cemented Adolf Hitler's dictatorship, Isherwood fled Germany on May 13, 1933. Afterwards, the Nazis shuttered most of Berlin's seedy cabarets, and many of Isherwood's cabaret acquaintances fled abroad or perished in concentration camps. These events served as the genesis for Isherwood's Berlin stories. In 1951, playwright John Van Druten adapted Isherwood's 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin into the Broadway play I Am a Camera which in turn became a 1955 film starring Laurence Harvey and Julie Harris. Musical development In early 1963, producer David Black commissioned English composer and lyricist Sandy Wilson to undertake a musical adaptation of Van Druten's 1951 play I Am a Camera. Black hoped that singer Julie Andrews would agree to star in the adaptation, but Andrews' manager refused to allow her to accept the role of Sally Bowles due to the character's immorality. By the time Wilson completed his work, however, Black's option on both the 1951 Van Druten play and its source material by Isherwood had lapsed and been acquired by rival Broadway producer Harold Prince. Prince wished to create a gritty adaptation of Isherwood's stories that drew parallels between the spiritual bankruptcy of Germany in the 1920s and contemporary social problems in the United States at a time "when the struggle for civil rights for black Americans was heating up as a result of nonviolent but bold demonstrations being held in the Deep South." Prince hired playwright Joe Masteroff to work on the adaptation. Both men believed that Wilson's score failed to capture the carefree hedonism of the Jazz Age in late 1920s Berlin. They wanted a score that "evoked the Berlin of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya." Consequently, Prince invited the songwriting team of John Kander and Fred Ebb to join the project. Kander and Ebb envisioned the work as a dramatic play preceded by a prologue of songs describing the Berlin atmosphere from various points of view. As the composers distributed the songs between scenes, they realized the story could be told in the structure of a more traditional book musical, and they replaced several songs with tunes more relevant to the plot. For the musical adaptation, playwright Joe Masteroff significantly altered Isherwood's original characters. He transformed the English protagonist into an American writer named Clifford Bradshaw; the antisemitic landlady became a tolerant woman with a Jewish beau who owned a fruit store; they cut various supporting characters and added new characters such as the Nazi smuggler Ernst Ludwig for dramatic purposes. The musical ultimately expressed two stories in one: the first, a revue centered on the decadence of the Kit Kat Klub, for which Hal Prince created the Master of Ceremonies (Emcee) character played by Joel Grey; the second, a story set in the society outside the club, thus juxtaposing the lives of the characters based on Isherwood's real-life associates and acquaintances with the seedy club. In fall 1966, the musical entered rehearsals. After viewing one of the last rehearsals before the company headed to Boston for the pre-Broadway run, Prince's friend Jerome Robbins suggested cutting the songs outside the cabaret, but Prince ignored his advice. In Boston, lead actress Jill Haworth struggled with her characterization of Sally Bowles. Critics thought Sally's blonde hair and white dress suggested a debutante at a senior prom instead of a cabaret singer, so Sally became a brunette before the show opened on Broadway. Prince staged the show in an unusual way for the time. As the audience entered the theater, they saw the curtain raised, exposing a stage with only a large mirror that reflected the auditorium. Instead of an overture, a drum roll and cymbal crash introduced the opening number. The show mixed dialogue scenes with expository songs and standalone cabaret numbers that provided social commentary. This innovative concept initially surprised audiences. Over time, they discerned the distinction between the two and appreciated the rationale behind them. == Synopsis ==