Cabaret is a musical that tells a story of ordinary people who are forced to make a choice between whether to 1) actively collaborate in the dehumanization and subsequent genocide of millions of other people, 2) ignore or keep quiet about that genocide, or 3) be killed themselves. The story follows aspiring writer Christopher Bradshaw on his journey to Berlin in 1939, where he sees firsthand the installation of fascism and its effects on the citizens of the city. The play was made into a popular movie in 1972.
Maybe recognizing, pointing out, and addressing fascism in the years 1939 (the date of Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories on which Cabaret is based), 1972 (when the Bob Fosse–directed movie was released), and 2026 (when our own country is passively embracing fascism) requires different preparations. Maybe a production such as this one might contribute to the process of developing those skills.
Under Deb Gottesman’s direction, this student production of Cabaret (produced by The Theatre Lab School of the Dramatic Arts and staged in Dupont Underground) makes clear that the stage musical and the 1972 movie are two very different things. While the far more expensive film soars artistically and technically as entertainment, the stage play asks the harder and more useful questions. Questions such as: “Suppose that by keeping still, you could manage until the end. What would you do?”
At first, I wasn’t enjoying this show at all. In the cavernous Dupont Underground, this production is “immersive” in a way that I wasn’t in the mood for. Breaking the fourth wall and forcing me to be in close proximity to these kids prancing and wiggling around while pretending to be “decadent” and “sexually kinky” strained my suspension of disbelief.
But maybe it’s because I am an older person, for whom death is much less hypothetical than it used to be, the story of the relationship between the elder characters, Fraulein Schneider and Herr Schultz (who are seeking companionship as their lives approach their inevitable ends), drew me in.
Their story anchors this production. It is the “So What?” (to cite the title of one of Fraulein Schneider’s songs) of the play itself. Their story runs parallel and in contrast to that of the young adult central characters, Clifford Bradshaw and Sally Bowles, who are more concerned with exploring life’s possibilities than with paying attention to its unavoidable limits. It is the Schneider/Schultz plot that gives rise to the question: “What would you do?” Notably, this plot was not in the movie.
The focus that the actors and the entire Theatre Lab production team brought to the details of the many stories being told and the commitment they brought to accepting the given circumstances of each character freed my attention as an audience member to focus on these “big” issues.
Tiz Rome brought a reliable “don’t mess with me” stage manager energy to the role of the Emcee. Enoch Hsiao’s meticulously conventional Clifford Bradshaw was someone who was a ripe and tempting target, asking to be exploited and manipulated.
The film of Cabaret made us love Liza Minnelli and turned the title song into a showbiz anthem for musical theater kids everywhere. In contrast, Arianna del Pino’s Sally Bowles, based on the character’s given circumstances in the stage text, was ambitious and intentionally irritating. Del Pino’s performance of the title song becomes Sally Bowles’ desperate defense of the way she avoids acknowledging what she is seeing around her and what she is doing with her life.
Caroline Smith Dewaal (Fraulein Schneider) and Steven Rosenthal (Herr Schultz) were an excellent team: two people just talking to each other over the course of the play and finding ways to build a lifelong relationship.
The Theatre Lab’s production of Cabaret reminds the audience of the urgent need for us theatergoers to shift the question we are asking ourselves from the aesthetic and hypothetical “What would you do?” to the more mature and honest “What will you do?”
Running Time: Approximately two hours and 45 minutes.
Cabaret plays through May 17, 2026, presented by The Theatre Lab performing at Dupont Underground, 19 Dupont Cir NW, Washington, DC. The run is sold out.
This production is the culmination of one of The Theatre Lab’s signature classes for adults, Creating a Musical Role.
Cabaret
Book by Joe Masteroff
Music by John Kander
Lyrics by Fred Ebb
Based on the play by John Van Druten and stories by Christopher Sherwood
Directed by Deb Gottesman
Choreography by Sarah Frances Williams
Music Direction by Steve McBride
