Images (Top to Bottom): Cast members of The Cherry Orchard and production poster [http://www.centralsquaretheater.org/]; Cast members of Cabaret and production poster [http://www.newrep.org/library.php, http://www.newrep.org/cabaret.php]
These two most recent theatre visits bring to mind the saying "Context is All" (supposedly attributed to Margaret Atwood in a Google search, but whatever...). After the splendour of ART's The Seagull, it is hard to go back to the okay, middling, slightly humdrum productions I saw in the last two weeks.
To begin with New Rep's production of Cabaret, I was really looking forward to this show. I saw the movie decades ago and don't really remember it, although Liza Minnelli has her finest hour, that's for sure. And I've never seen it on stage. I was there on opening night and also for what turned out to be New Rep's Artistic Director Rick Lombardo's (and the director of the show's) closing night, as he's heading off to head up the San Jose Repertory Theatre. So there were some speeches and gifts on top of the usual opening night festivities. Lombardo has clearly made his mark on New Rep, directing many shows over his 12 year stint there. Alas, this final show is not his high watermark. While serviceable, this production lacks a keen edge and falters most in the miscasting of the central role of Sally Bowles.
Cabaret has an interesting history, composed by John Kander and Fred Ebb and premiered in 1966 (with the film version following in 1972), and based on a play by John van Druten (I Am a Camera) that in turn was based on a short autobiographical story by Christopher Isherwood. In 1966, the musical must have felt very cutting-edge, set as it is in Weimar Berlin on the cusp of the Nazi regime in the late twenties and early thirties. Young American writer wanna-be Cliff Bradshaw comes to Berlin for the exciting lifestyle and quickly meets British cabaret singer/stripper Sally Bowles at the somewhat seedy but compelling Kit Kat Club. She flees from a previous liaison with the club's manager and ends up living with Cliff, and despite his proclivities to 'play for the other team', they become lovers and eventually Sally is pregnant. During all this, we also meet Cliff's friend Ernst, his landlady Fraulein Schneider, her suitor the Jewish grocer Herr Schulz and another tenant in the boarding house, prostitute Fraulein Kost. All of this action outside the club is intercut with musical numbers in the club, emceed by 'The Emcee' a part made famous by Joel Grey in the film version (he originated the role in Harold Prince's 1966 production) and more recently by Alan Cumming in Sam Mendes/Rob Marshall's' remount in 1998. As the Nazis rise to power, and the love match between Schneider and Schultz is broken off to reflect the growing fear in Germany, things get darker and darker at the club and Cliff tries to convince Sally to leave with him, to go back to America for a white picket fence future. Instead, Sally sells her fur coat for an abortion and returns to the stage at the club, singing the title song in triumphant desperation as Cliff leaves the city and country just in time.
It is a powerful combination of entertainment and drama that centres around the character of Sally, a mixed-up lower class Londoner with stars in her eyes who cannot tear herself away from the false promises of fame and glory that the Kit Kat Club promises. Her relationship with Cliff and his growing real love for her and need to protect and care for her despite her self-destructiveness is what drives the show forward. In New Rep's production we have a quite good Cliff from David Krinitt, who plays his good-hearted American-ness very well, such that we travel along with him as he realizes with growing horror what is happening as Hitler takes power. While I found him less convincing as a bisexual (downplayed in this production, and maybe the stage version itself as compared to Bob Fosse's film version with the role played by Michael York), I did find him well-cast, with a pleasant singing voice and warm stage presence. I had more trouble with Aimee Doherty as Sally. She is so clearly an ingenue, very perky and pretty and can sing and dance, no doubt. But what was missing for me was the dark side of Sally, the narcissistic side, the vulnerable side, the self-hating side that leads her to equate the degradation and exploitation of the Kit Kat Club with success of some kind. I may not be crazy about Liza, but she was so right as Sally in the movie...all the big-eyed fragility and thin-skinned bravado that you see in her...echoing for so many of us right back through her to her tragically tormented mother Judy Garland, made her a Sally for the ages. And other actresses have also played Sally, I am sure, with these same complexities; Judi Dench (yes!), Natasha Richardson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and more. When Ms. Doherty sings "Maybe This Time", pleading with herself to finally catch a chance at happiness with Cliff, to be the winner rather than the loser, it should break our hearts but instead comes across as a pep-talk. Too bad. Doherty does fare better in some of the other production numbers and carries us home with the closing title song with lots of pinache..the plucky showmanship of Sally is all there...what's missing is the tragedy.
John Kuntz does better here as the Emcee, put through his paces with a choreography-heavy show that makes the bruises I saw on some of the dancers' legs after the show obviously not makeup. But his is suitably creepy as well as somewhat tragic Emcee as he morphs into a concentration camp victim of Nazism by the curtain (an addition that Mendes brought to his revival that has stuck). Cheryl McMahon as Fraulein Schneider and Paul D. Farwell as Schultz are both fine in their work; their love affair and its sad end were quite moving. Shannon Lee Jones does nice work as the ballsy whore-with-a-heart-of-gold Fraulein Kost. And the supporting company works well together on a set that switches back from inside to outside the club with the use of sliding set pieces and revolving doors. The show is well-orchestrated by a band (in drag!) on a second level upstage. I just found the whole package a bit ho-hum, and the few directorial flourishes--such as projecting newsreel footage of Hitler onto the stage floor--didn't go far enough or deep enough for me. But as I said in my caveat above, it'll probably take me some time, or another show that shocks me into wideawakeness like The Seagull, for me to regain my critical balance. So, three stars out of five for this Cabaret.
Same again for the Central Square Theatre's production of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (I know, I know..it's not even a fair fight is it?) Like Cabaret, I found this production serviceable but mostly uninspired. While it features some nice performances, it lacks an overarching vision that makes it more than a pleasant night out. I must also disclose my bias that I don't care for this Chekhov nearly as much as his other masterworks (The Seagull, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya), although it does have some lovely moments.
The plot centres around landowner Madame Ranyevskaya and her family and friends, who are dealing with the forced decision to sell off her beloved cherry orchard and family home out of necessity to cover her debts incurred through a series of bad choices and irresponsibility. She returns from Paris (minus a lover who has betrayed her) to a home that she waxes nostalgic about with her brother Leonid Gayev, but that she is willing to forfeit for a return to Paris and her feckless man. Her daughter Anya and adopted daughter Varya become the victims of her folly as their lives suffer as a result. Former peasant farmer turned merchant Yermolai Lopahin saves the day and buys the orchard, thus taking over the property upon which he was raised as a serf, but cannot bring himself to ask for the hand of his beloved Varya (Chekhov was nothing if not acutely class conscious). She must go into servitude herself as her selfish adoptive mother leaves her behind to return to Paris...until the money runs out again. Amidst all this there are secondary characters who voice their positions from varied perspectives; radical student Pyotr who is preparing for revolution (which will come to Russia soon enough) and loves Anya, servants Yasha and Dunyasha who fall into lust with each other and ridicule their betters in the time-honored tradition of comedy, and old devoted valet Firs who inhabits his servitude to the bitter end.
Director Daniel Gidron brings nice clear portraits of all these characters to this production and makes the most of what is clearly a limited budget and a minimal set. Annette Miller plays Mme. Ranyevskaya with the required combination of charm and obliviousness, but she rarely lets the "Everything will be just fine" mask slip to reveal the unhappiness of this lost and self-described 'wanton' woman. Finding and mining more of these moments would deepen her work. Her brother Leonid Gayev is played by Michael Balcanoff with a ramrod spine and bluster that works well. All the younger girls in the production do nice work; Elise Audrey Manning is a sweet Anya, Varya a sharp and embittered Varya trying to break out of her own mold but failing and Darcy Fowler a warm and bawdy Dunyasha. Standout performance for me was Ken Baltin as the peasant-turned-merchant Yermolai Lopahin. His transparent love for this family he has known all his life combined with his growing sense of almost shame-faced economic superiority over them is well-wrought and touching, as is his hopeless and unspoken love for Varya. An actor with a clown-like demeanour, he brings a kind of sad dignity to the role that rings true.
The production itself is a bit rough around the edges in the design department. I'm fine with low-budget theatre... Jerzy Grotowski's Poor Theatre and all that..and believe that the finest dramatic experiences can be had with little or no design elements. For me, it's always about the actor-actor and actor-audience relationship (Read My Book!!). That said, if you're going to put your actors in period costumes, you are obliged to get it right. Unfortunately, I was distracted by costume pieces that were all wrong...shoes with elastic gores, coats with zippers that looked like LL Bean barn coats. Some of the women's dresses were quite lovely, especially Annette Miller's, and I wonder if they were borrowed or rented, as the men had less consistent costumes, including an actor in a smaller role appearing in what was clearly a polyester suit at one point! My take on this is severe, I know, but I'd prefer to watch this show with the cast in rehearsal garb than to be taken out of the constructed world of the play by costume pieces that don't fit. This is especially the case when the set design is so minimal, thereby pushing our attention even more onto what the actors are wearing. Directors and designers, take note! Lecture over...so is this review.
