Review of Cabaret at Birmingham Rep

Sep 4 2008 Review by Diane Parkes

BIRMINGHAM Repertory Theatre would have been hard-pressed to find a better season opener than this West End production of Cabaret.

Not only is it gutsy, colourful and achingly emotional, it also boasts highly successful actor and dancer Wayne Sleep and star-in-the-making Samantha Barks in the cast.

Sleep is eerily watchable as the Emcee. He manages just the right balance of dark humour and ambiguity so that the audience is never quite sure whether to love or fear him.

The show also makes the most of Sleep’s own talents by giving him a touch of comic dancing which shows the 60-year-old still has it.

Barks meanwhile is a revelation as Sally Bowles. She may have missed out on winning the television talent show I’d Do Anything but she is certainly not short of star quality. She has the naive Sally down to a tee and is at ease on stage, capable of shifting from sexy to vulnerable and of belting out a good number.

And she certainly has them, whether or not you like Cabaret it has to be admitted that it has plenty of powerful songs like the hopeful Maybe This Time, the cheeky Don’t Tell Mama and the anthemic Cabaret.

This Rufus Norris production works well in the Rep. The theatre’s intimate size takes us all into the Kit Kat Klub where the drama unfolds and ensures we can pick up the details.

But in some ways it gets a bit too carried away with details.

While the cabaret is supposed to hit us in the face the production does aim for maximum shock value where sometimes subtlety would be more effective.

Do we really need to see full frontal male nudity to know that Fraulein Kost is working as a prostitute or sado-masochistic sex to understand the “anything goes” attitude of pre-Nazi Berlin?

And with the gift of historical hindsight, I am not sure the Holocaust-type naked huddlings at the close are needed for us to know where Germany was going.

That said, this is a promising start for the Rep’s new season. Until September 13.

Verdict: 4/5