Story of the Week: Everything We Know About the Broadway Revival of Cabaret

My very favorite musical is coming back to Broadway. Cabaret tells the story of Clifford Bradshaw, an American writer living in hedonistic Berlin shortly before the Nazi rise to power. He befriends Sally Bowles, an expatriate English chanteuse who works at a nightclub presided over by a libidinous emcee.

The musical (book by Joe Masteroff, music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb) is based on the John Van Druten play I Am a Camera, which is itself based on Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories. Over the years, it has proved to be one of the most popular, as well as one of the most malleable shows to grace the Broadway stage.

Story of the Week will recount the history of Cabaret on Broadway and will offer a preview of this new straight-from-London production by director Rebecca Frecknall.

How many times has Cabaret played Broadway?  

When the cast of the new revival bows at the August Wilson Theatre on April 21, 2024, it will be the fifth time Cabaret has opened on Broadway. The original production, directed by a 38-year-old Harold Prince, ran from 1966 to 1969 and won the 1967 Tony for Best Musical. A film adaptation directed by Bob Fosse and starring Michael York and Liza Minnelli followed in 1972.

Cabaret was first revived in 1987 in a production that was also helmed by Prince, and generally derided by critics as a warmed-over remounting of the original. Boasting the then-unprecedented top ticket price of $50, it closed after 261 performances and 18 previews. Joel Grey, who originated the role of the Emcee on Broadway (winning a Tony) and reprised his performance for the film (winning an Oscar), was given top billing, leading New York Times critic Frank Rich to complain, “To have Cabaret reliant on its emcee is almost like reviving Oklahoma! as a star vehicle for the actor playing Jud.”

And yet it is beyond dispute that the next major revival, which debuted at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 1993, made the career of Alan Cumming, who played the Emcee as a kind of oversexed ghoul, clad in ghostly white makeup and elaborate suspenders (I remember being mesmerized by him during a performance for The Rosie O’Donnell Show, unaccustomed to such an unapologetically queer presence on my television in the morning… or at any other hour in the ’90s). That production was helmed by Sam Mendes, who was joined by choreographer Rob Marshall for the 1998 transfer to Broadway, which originally played the crumbling Henry Miller’s Theatre before transferring to Studio 54, where it ran through January 4, 2004.

The production featured substantial script and score revisions to incorporate numbers from the film like “Mein Herr,” as well as the Emcee’s second act number “I Don’t Care Much,” which was first included in the 1987 revival. The staging placed members of the audience at cabaret tables surrounding a thrust stage, inviting us inside the Kit Kat Club in a way that was revolutionary for Broadway at the time. The nearly six-year run provided a steady source of revenue for its producer, the not-for-profit Roundabout Theatre Company. And it proved to be a star-making turn for Cumming, who took home the 1998 Tony for Best Actor in a Musical. Like Grey before him, Cumming returned to Cabaret in 2014 for a remount of the Mendes production, which ran at Studio 54 until March 29, 2015. For most amateur and stock productions, the Mendes vision of Cabaret is the North Star — but it may not be for much longer.

Where did this new production of Cabaret come from and how is it different?

It opened on December 12, 2021 at London’s Playhouse Theatre, which has been rebranded the “Kit Kat Club” for what promises to be an extended run (Jake Shears and Rebecca Lucy Taylor recently joined the London cast). Director Rebecca Frecknall goes even further than Mendes in her environmental staging, which is in the round, with those closest to the central stage seated at intimate cabaret tables with individual lights and little telephones (just like in the film). From a glance at the ticketing page, it appears as though this design (by Tom Scutt) will carry over to Broadway, requiring a significant alteration of the August Wilson Theatre — although perhaps not as extensive as what was required for Here Lies Love.

The Broadway production is already advertising food and drink packages, including a pre-show stage-side dining experience for $105 (in addition to the ticket price) that offers a light three courses and a bottle of champagne. Seating and preshow entertainment begin 75 minutes before curtain — an unheard-of amount of time on Broadway, where the house typically doesn’t open until a half-hour before showtime. By contrast, audiences in London tend to hang out (and drink) at the theater before and after the show.

It should be noted that the August Wilson was recently acquired by Britain’s Ambassador Theatre Group (a lead producer on Cabaret), which has long endeavored to bring a bit of the London theatergoing experience to New York with its Ambassador Lounges and by offering real glassware at the Hudson Theatre, as opposed to the sippy-cups to which we New Yorkers have become accustomed. As an adult who enjoys having a good time without being nannied to death, I’m all for it.

Not only does the planned preshow work toward creating the atmosphere of a cabaret, but it makes good business sense: If Broadway ticket-buyers are already consuming overpriced dinners at midtown restaurants, they might as well be spending that money at the theater, which needs new sources of revenue to keep up with rising production costs. Moreover, it helps make theatergoing more of a special event at a time when consumers want a compelling reason to brave the inconvenience of traveling to Times Square for an 8pm performance, when they could very well just stay home and binge Netflix.

The cast will be led by Gayle Rankin (Glow) as Sally Bowles, with Eddie Redmayne reprising his WhatsOnStage Award-winning performance as the Emcee (you can read an interview with Redmayne in which he discusses the show here). Critic Sarah Crompton praised Redmayne’s “Mephistophelean” portrayal of the Emcee as, “a proper performance rather than a star turn,” although it is undeniable that his stint in the role has already added to the luster — once again proving that you really can build a production around this mesmerizing character. No further casting has been announced, but you can expect this is one of those shows that top talents have been covetously eying.

That’s not just because this is a revival of a well-known musical, but an opportunity to work on what feels like something entirely new. I’ve long admired the writers of Cabaret (of the three, only 96-year-old John Kander remains) for their willingness to reinvent the show, which has a proven elasticity, allowing it to be retold a thousand different ways. If this Cabaret is a hit, it might even last as long as another notable Kander and Ebb revival.