Off The Wall Theatre opens its season with a dark, sensual reimagining of Kander and Ebb’s Broadway classic, Cabaret. In the theater’s limited space, director Dale Gutzman stages a haunting spectacle of glitz, glamour and gall with a clever and sardonic spin that forces his audience deep into the deliciously sinful netherworld of the Kit Kat Club.
As the Nazi Party begins its takeover of Germany, political turmoil consumes Berlin. In an attempt to flee the chaos of their daily lives, citizens escape to the Kit Kat Club, a seedy cabaret where “life is always beautiful.” Gutzman wisely utilizes the limited space, transforming a small 30-seat theater into a dilapidated 1933 German cabaret. In the center of it all is Sally Bowles (Laura Monagle), who lives a reckless life of carefree ignorance as the club’s star showgirl and muse to newly arrived American novelist Cliff Bradshaw (Claudio Perrone).
Observing and orchestrating the cabaret is the club’s delightful, debauched Emcee (Jeremy Welter). While Welter struggled a bit at dress rehearsal with the lighter numbers, his intense energy perfectly matches the material in Gutzman’s staging of the musical’s darker parts. Welter’s final powerful performance of “Willkommen” was so hauntingly intense that several audience members were left in tears at the show’s conclusion.
Traditional productions generally skirt around Cabaret’s heavier themes of politics and sexuality, but in typical Off The Wall style, Gutzman chooses to acknowledge and amplify these issues, creating a series of powerful political and social statements. Serious, confused and vulnerable, Cliff uses his relationship with Sally as a way to hide from his homosexuality. In the intimate space of Off The Wall, Perrone and Monagle’s “dance at the end of the world” serves as the captivating, sensual centerpiece of Gutzman’s Cabaret.
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Through Sept. 28 at Off The Wall Theatre, 127 E. Wells St. For tickets call 414-484- 8874 or visit offthewalltheatre.com. Many performances are already sold out.
