The Pain Remains

Seattle's great seedy club stage, Re-bar, launched Garrison to fame. He spontaneously combusts when the Emcee interacts with the audience (real 5th Avenue patrons sipping wine in seats right by the stage), and is damn good getting his Rocky Horror on in the extraordinarily glitzified song-and-dance routines. He takes top acting honors, too. Though Kelly belts out the classic Kander/Ebb tunes, especially the love lament "Maybe This Time," with bigger pipes (why do they amplify her so?), she lacks the screwball loopiness and sinister neuroticism the part calls out for in anguish.

I'm pleased to see no-budget sensation Garrison arrive in a 5th Avenue–produced touring show with money to burn, yet sad to see the production screw him out of the sheer amoral creepiness that made Joel Grey's career. Grey's Emcee stood chillingly outside history, even while up to his nose in Weimar's most brownshirt-provoking vices. He presented Nazism as the most theatrically spectacular perversion; he didn't give a rip about its victims. But Garrison's Emcee doubles over in sympathy as Nazis kick innocents in the gut. When his Kit Kat Club changes its decor from S/M to SS, he is only following orders. Inwardly, his heart grieves.

Previous versions of Cabaret blamed Weimar decadents for bringing on Nazism. This one views Weimar as a brief, liberating cultural flowering (like the Prague Spring) stomped by Nazi jackboots. This is historically more fair-minded, and definitely the way Isherwood saw it, but it vitiates the drama. This production's softheartedness as compared to the original Broadway show and film blunts the impact of the Emcee's scariest number, "If You Could See Her," a love song to a gorilla who turns out to be a Jewess. If the Emcee isn't tacitly complicit in Nazism, the terrifyingly racist song makes no sense.

There's a finely acted but inert subplot about Cliff and Sally's aged landlady, Fräulein Schneider (Suzy Hunt), and her thug-thwarted romance with the Jewish grocer of her dreams, Herr Schultz (Allen Fitzpatrick). Hunt gives Schneider verve and poignance; Schultz's imploding ego is impressively delicate and funny. But Isherwood went to Berlin to score something more sizzlingly seamy than such earnest sweetness. It violates the nihilism that drove prior Cabarets to greatness. And their bland songs (not heard in the movie) suck compared to the Kurt Weill–ish vileness and hooky, metallic staccato of "Willkommen," "The Money Song," and "Two Ladies" (heard both in the movie and, delightfully, here).

Still, the bottom line is those songs come off well. "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," the pastiche of Nazi uplift anthems presaging the regime that scrubbed Weimar clean, is horribly lovely, ending with a human turned swastika. Even in a sentimentalized, visually loud, spectacularly Vegas-ish production, Cabaret remains kitsch with a winning sting.

stage@seattleweekly.com