Evaluation: ‘Cabaret’ with a kinetic Eddie Redmayne can’t redeem a faltering Broadway revival

If ambience ended up the top secret to theatrical results, the new Broadway revival of “Cabaret” that opened on Sunday at the August Wilson Theatre would be the strike of the yr.

The location has been transformed into the Package Kat Club, the Weimar period Berlin nightspot, where the naughty pastiche rating by John Kander and Fred Ebb receives to strut its decadent stuff.

A prologue invitations theatergoers to immerse on their own in the boozy, burlesque spirit of the present right before it adequately starts. The bar is buzzing as dancers of freaky eclecticism supply a taste of the risqué entertainment awaiting every single fetish.

The theater’s standard proscenium stage, which Lea Michele not so very long in the past established ablaze in her effectiveness as Fanny Brice in the revival of “Funny Woman,” has been reconfigured into an in-the-round auditorium. A lady seated in front of me requested if I’d like a glass of wine. I declined. I like my intoxication at the theater to be administered artistically, and there’s the rub with this erratic revival.

The generation, a British import directed by Rebecca Frecknall, won seven Olivier Awards, like best musical. But some thing vital has been missing in the transatlantic crossing.

Eddie Redmayne, whose kinetic portrayal of the Emcee was the communicate of London, reprises his functionality in the part that earned Joel Grey and Alan Cumming eternal glory. Winner of an Oscar (for playing Stephen Hawking in “The Concept of Everything”) and a Tony Award (for his highlighted overall performance in “Red”), Redmayne puts his personal androgynous stamp on the character in a spellbinding exhibit that is as bodily specific as it is theatrically audacious.

Decked out like a marionette clown with sexual proclivities that refuse to be hemmed in by formal types, he resembles a Howdy Doody determine reconceived for a wild picture spread in Vogue Hommes. His sinewy torso twisting with whiplash grace, his arms undulating like snakes that have fallen less than the charm of a clarinet, Redmayne elevates the creation not by his amount of musical showmanship but by his potently deployed stage existence.

If you’re on the lookout for powerhouse singing, this outing of “Cabaret” will sorely disappoint. The output is trustworthy to the seedy Berlin aesthetic of the show’s locale. The characters in Joe Masteroff’s reserve, primarily based on the play “I Am a Camera” by John van Druten that was alone centered on stories by Christopher Isherwood, aren’t intended to be Broadway Olympians.

Gayle Rankin as Sally Bowles in the 2024 Broadway revival of “Cabaret.”

(Marc Brenner)

There’s a university of thought that Liza Minnelli, who gained an Oscar for her rendition of Sally Bowles in the outstanding film adaptation of “Cabaret,” was too completed a performer for the purpose. I have under no circumstances offered much credence to this argument, believing that film musicals, like musicals commonly, are elevated by virtuoso singing and dancing.

But in any situation, this creation usually takes this notion of fictional integrity to a ludicrous extraordinary in the casting of Gayle Rankin as Sally Bowles. Jessie Buckley, a renowned singer and gripping spectacular actor, gained (along with Redmayne) an Olivier for her overall performance in the London run. Rankin appears to have stepped into an interpretation of the component that she has not the exact same ability established to pull off. Not only is her singing raucous but her characterization is off-placing, even antipathetic.

Why Clifford Bradshaw (Ato Blankson-Wooden), the bisexual American writer who is on the lam in Berlin from his parents’ traditional expectations, has made a decision to shack up with Sally, a tawdry chanteuse whose sad-sweet appeal is nowhere in evidence, is one particular of the unanswered mysteries of this revival.

Rankin’s Sally strains soon after extraordinary consequences that are unsuccessful to materialize. “Cabaret” has this kind of a rich Broadway background. Natasha Richardson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michelle Williams and Emma Stone are aspect of the show’s superb New York observe record. The function can accommodate a wide spectrum of musical and dramatic talents, to say absolutely nothing of various methods to the character.

You never have to approve of Sally’s morality, but you have to treatment about the character’s destiny. And that is what Rankin’s unalluring functionality stops. What does it say about a revival of “Cabaret” in which I retained hoping that Fraulein Schneider (Bebe Neuwirth) would transform the locks of her boardinghouse to maintain Sally out of the output?

But there are other problems in the ensemble. The scenes in between Sally and Blankson-Wood’s Clifford cry out for an performing mentor — not a imagined I can keep in mind having at a high quality Broadway revival of a typical musical in recent seasons.

I was relieved any time the trusted veterans of the enterprise, Neuwirth and Steven Skybell in the job of Herr Schultz — were being entrance and center. But Neuwirth’s diminished singing only accentuated the production’s lackluster musicality — a weird irony supplied Neuwirth‘s Broadway pedigree.

Steven Skybell and Bebe Neuwirth in the 2024 Broadway revival of “Cabaret.”

(Marc Brenner)

The staging is at its greatest when it’s in circular movement. The choreography by Julia Cheng does not goal to dazzle, but the fluidity is hypnotic even so. The motley Package Kat chorus crew adds ribald vibrancy to the swirl.

Redmayne is the purpose to see this generation, while as fascinating as his overall performance is, he are unable to rescue this misguided revival on his very own. I’m also not solely distinct on how Frecknall is decoding the Emcee’s part. The character’s queer vulnerability — the feeling of a previous gasp of misfit sexual freedom prior to the Nazis kill the occasion — is dropped in the shuffle of the political menace that Redmayne starts to reflect in costuming and have an affect on that become at any time a lot more expressionistic.

The Nazi peril is handled a touch too decoratively, nevertheless when Ernst Ludwig (a convincing Henry Gottfried), a newfound German good friend of Clifford with questionable small business dealings, will take off his coat and reveals a swastika armband the viewers emits a collective sound of shock. But normally, the emotional impact of the story is nil.

Musically, the influence is even considerably less. Commonly, when Sally belts “Maybe This Time” in the 1st act, I by no means want the moment to conclude. Not in this article. Ordinarily, I have to restrain myself from answering the title-track summons as the exhibit moves towards its significant end. (What good is sitting down on your own in your room or anyplace for that subject with songs this wonderful in the planet?) Sadly, in this grating rendition, I was recoiling from the din of a two-little bit cabaret floozy and glancing at my check out.