Kit Kat Klub comes alive

Constant motion, fine directing mark American Repertory Theater’s ‘Cabaret’

September 10, 2010|Don Aucoin, Globe Staff

CAMBRIDGE — Chances are a lot of people will flock to see American Repertory Theater’s “Cabaret’’ simply because rock singer Amanda Palmer is starring in it.

But they might be surprised to discover that the best reasons to see this innovative and engrossing “Cabaret’’ have less to do with Palmer than with an impressive pair of newcomers and an old ART hand.

Director Steven Bogart, a drama teacher at Lexington High School who once counted Palmer among his students, makes his regional theater debut with a visually inventive and emotionally powerful production that more than justifies Palmer’s faith in her mentor.

Bogart obscures the clunkiness of Joe Masteroff’s book (always a problem with “Cabaret’’) by creating a swirl of constant motion. In a mostly successful bid to evoke the Kit Kat Klub, the decadent 1930s Berlin nightclub that is the primary setting of “Cabaret,’’ Bogart has his performers scurry and slither into the corners and on top of the railings and tables inside Oberon, the club the ART uses as a second stage.

For the finale, Bogart creates a chilling tableau that gives concrete form to the horror — the Nazi concentration camps — that has been looming over “Cabaret’’ the entire evening.

The other newcomer who will have audiences buzzing is Aly Trasher, who finds new layers in the character of Sally Bowles, the ambitious singer whose veneer of worldliness conceals a childlike innocence.

Trasher nails “Don’t Tell Mama’’ and “Mein Herr’’ in Act 1, and then, near the end of Act 2, delivers a riveting rendition of the title song. Her hair wet and bedraggled and her face ashen, she turns it into a dispatch from the edge of desperation that contains not a trace of the triumphalism associated with Liza Minnelli’s version. (Full disclosure: Trasher’s mother is a hometown acquaintance.)

The ART veteran who reminds us yet again of the depth of his talent is Thomas Derrah. He turns what might have been a mere stunt — he plays Fraulein Schneider, Sally’s landlady — into a performance of genuine poignancy.

In addition to Derrah, other ART veterans also acquit themselves well, including Remo Airaldi as Herr Schultz, Fraulein Schneider’s Jewish fiancé, and Jeremy Geidt, as Max, the owner of the Kit Kat Klub. Max leads the audience in a drinking song before “Cabaret’’ begins, in what one assumes is Bogart’s attempt to get the audience to stop thinking of itself as spectators at a play, but rather as patrons in a club.

Capable supporting work is turned in by Matt Wood as Cliff Bradshaw, the American would-be writer who falls in love with Sally, and David Costa as Ernst Ludwig, the businessman who suddenly begins wearing a swastika armband.