If Trinity Repertory Company’s “Cabaret’’ does not escape that shadow, it’s not for lack of directorial ingenuity by artistic director Curt Columbus.
Columbus deploys finesse and visual imagination in his production, helping this “Cabaret’’ to mostly overcome the shortcomings of Joe Masteroff’s book, a lack of chemistry between the two romantic leads, a cast with varying levels of vocal proficiency, and, believe it or not, a couple of sluggish songs by John Kander and Fred Ebb.
There are, of course, a number of marvelous songs as well, several of which are sung by Joe Wilson Jr. as the androgynous, leering Emcee who presides over the decadent doings at the Kit Kat Klub in 1930s Berlin. From Wilson’s jovial-yet-sinister “Willkommen’’ through his renditions of “Two Ladies,’’ “The Money Song,’’ and “If You Could See Her,’’ this “Cabaret’’ gains vitality whenever the Emcee is onstage and loses it whenever he is off.
Inside the club, it’s all fun and games, Weimar-style, a constant carnival of lewd song, dance, and cross-dressing. But outside the club, the storm clouds of Nazism are gathering. Soon enough that storm will move inside.
One evening, the Kit Kat audience includes an American writer named Clifford Bradshaw (Mauro Hantman). Bradshaw has come to Berlin in search of “something to write about,’’ but he is sometimes lured away from his typewriter by Ernst Ludwig (Stephen Thorne), a mysterious businessman involved in some shadowy activities.
A flamboyant young British singer named Sally Bowles (Rachael Warren) bursts onstage, singing “Don’t Tell Mama’’ while accompanied by an ensemble bedecked in nun’s wimples, black brassieres, and black garters. Bradshaw is beguiled by Sally, and he wows her by reciting some poetry (not Keats or Shelley, but “Casey at the Bat’’). He’s not really prepared for her to show up at his door, much less for her to announce that she’s moving in. But she does, and the two become lovers.
