Springtime For Sally

By Richard Zoglin

Come to the Cabaret, old chum. This time you'll hardly recognize the place. The Kit Kat Klub, where Sally Bowles tried to sing away the gathering Nazi storm clouds in the 1966 musical Cabaret, is a real cabaret now, a converted nightclub where theatergoers can sip drinks (but can't rustle programs, handed out only after the show) while immersing themselves in Berlin decadence circa 1929. Or is it 1999? The club has a seedy-chic, downtown, S&M look: the dancers have runs in their stockings, and even the orchestra members, in sleeveless black tops, look ready for Details.

Sally herself, played by Natasha Richardson, is older, more wasted, less the perky-quirky charmer played by Liza Minnelli in the 1972 movie. Richardson (The Handmaid's Tale onscreen; Anna Christie onstage; Vanessa Redgrave's daughter in real life) doesn't belt out the Kander and Ebb numbers a la Liza; she acts them. The climactic title song, most startlingly, is no longer a triumphant anthem. Richardson clutches the microphone and grits through the lyrics ("Start by admitting/ From cradle to tomb/ Isn't that long a stay"), shouting her defiance even as she struggles to keep from flying apart.

Broadway loves to revisit its musical heritage, but director Sam Mendes' new version of Cabaret is likely to give it a jolt. The sex is raw and upfront: Cliff (John Benjamin Hickey), the American writer who befriends Sally, is more overtly bisexual, and the leering number Two Ladies features a shadow play of simulated sex. The garish emcee (Alan Cumming, giving a spectacularly decadent twist on the part that made Joel Grey's career) sports blue and red eye shadow, sequined nipples and suspenders wrapped around his crotch--Alex from A Clockwork Orange filtered through Madonna's Sex book. Where Bob Fosse's film was a Felliniesque star vehicle for Minnelli, Mendes has deglamorized Cabaret, broadened its human scope and brilliantly re-energized it for the '90s.

The show also gives audiences a chance to say Wilkommen to the latest in a seemingly endless line of young directing phenoms from Britain. Mendes, 32, artistic director of London's adventurous Donmar Warehouse theater, has staged everything from Shakespeare (Ralph Fiennes in Troilus and Cressida) to Stephen Sondheim (revivals of Company and Assassins). For his U.S. debut Mendes has updated an old show with vibrant theatricality in the way Stephen Daldry turned An Inspector Calls into an expressionist nightmare and Nicholas Hytner gave Carousel a lyrical new coat of paint.

Mendes, a compact, tousle-haired man with a boyish lack of pretension, graduated from Cambridge and had a pair of shows on the West End (London Assurance and The Cherry Orchard) by the time he was 23. He later spent five years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, developing a craft free of theatrical folderol. "You learned how to do Shakespeare with two tables and four chairs," he says. "Theater is not about illustrating, not about decorating. It's about building images from the inside out. That's frightening for actors. They can't blend into the scenery."

It's the audience that blends into the scenery in Cabaret: Mendes spent more than two years looking for a place in New York to duplicate the cabaret setting he devised for his London production in 1993, eventually doing a makeover on the former site of Xenon, a once hot disco. A lover of movie musicals like Mary Poppins since childhood, Mendes was drawn to Cabaret when he read the original Broadway script and discovered how much had been left out of the movie--including an entire subplot about Cliff's landlady (originally played by Lotte Lenya, here by Mary Louise Wilson). Mendes made further revisions in the book with writer Joe Masteroff and then cast actors who mostly had little or no musical experience. "I didn't want a produced sound," Mendes says. "The singing voices come out of their speaking voices." Even the orchestra members, who also play roles in the show, were cast for their acting and singing ability--and only then for their prowess with an instrument. And though the Nazi shadow looms large in the production, Mendes resists trotting out swastikas for an easy reaction. "It's become a cliche," he says. "You can't act the beginning of Nazism with a knowledge of the ending. The point is to show how seductive it was, to draw the audience in."

Mendes is now dealing with the more usual seductions faced by hot young theater directors. He has turned down offers to direct such movies as Wings of the Dove and Mrs. Dalloway, but wants to write an original screenplay that he would direct. He's preparing for yet another New York stage production (Othello at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in April), and would like to direct an opera. But he can't get those Broadway musicals out of his head. Gypsy and Fiddler on the Roof are tops on his list for potential revival. "A lot of them are out there waiting to be rediscovered," he says. And a lot of us are waiting to see what he'll discover in them.