Playwright: Joe Masteroff; Composer: John Kander; Lyricist: Fred Ebb. At: Drury Lane Oakbrook,
100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace. Phone: 630-530-8300; $29-$38. Runs through Oct. 11
Drury Lane Oakbrook's Cabaret is both a chilling nightmare and a beautiful dream come true. The subject matter is nightmarish ( the rise of the Nazis amid the decadence of Weimar Republic Germany ) , but Drury Lane's realization of Cabaret is a gloriously theatrical dream that dramatically sucker-punches you in the gut.
Instead of imitating the iconoclastic ( and explicit ) 1998 Broadway revival co-directed by Sam Mendes and Rob Marshall, director Jim Corti ( a one-time understudy to award-winning Cabaret star Joel Grey ) opts to work more with Joe Masteroff's script from Cabaret's 1987 Broadway revival.
That means the songs from the eight-time Academy Award-winning 1972 Bob Fosse film are not grafted onto John Kander and Fred Ebb's classic Broadway score. And instead of monochromatic threadbare lingerie, costume designer Tatjana Radisic has reupholstered the show's seediness with glamorous and showy costumes.
Corti also shakes things up by logically framing the show as a flashback nightmare starting in a train compartment. Instead of opening the show with the iconic number "Wilkommen," we get a dialogue scene between the initially helpful German Ernst Ludwig ( a very Aryan-looking Brandon Dahlquist ) and our bisexual American hero, Clifford Bradshaw ( Jim Weitzer, who makes for an upstanding and handsome stand-in for the ever-observant gay author Christopher Isherwood ) .
That decision may initially take away from the disorienting command of Patrick Andrews' Emcee, but he soon regains it by skillfully singing and dancing about the alternately shiny and industrially gritty stage ( Brian Sidney Bembridge's set design masterfully fills out the stage by simultaneously suggesting a nightclub and massive train station ) .
Performance wise, Corti has mostly come up trumps with his casting. Rebecca Finnegan essentially steals the show by convincingly aging up as the world-weary landlady Fraulein Schneider. She's paired nicely with David Lively's Herr Schultz, a German-Jewish lodger whose romantic ambitions get heartbreakingly thwarted.
Christine Sherrill's desperate working girl of Frauline Kost also adds some funny va-voom as she blatantly juggles her German sailor customers under Fraulein Schneider's watch.
The one iffy cast member ( at least on opening night ) was Zarah Mahler as the alternately brittle and fragile heroine Sally Bowles. Mahler's British accent wandered now and then from both coasts of the Atlantic, while her performance of the title song didn't dazzle as much as expected ( though if Sally had to sleep her way into all her jobs, she logically shouldn't be that super-talented ) .
But cumulatively, Drury Lane's Cabaret is an impressive winner. Corti's hard-working and sexy ensemble choreographically conjures up the artistic energy and desperation of Weimar Germany with plenty of panache and menace.
So don't oversleep for your chance to get tickets for Drury Lane's Cabaret. Otherwise, you'll rue the fact that you missed this darkly dreamy production.
