The setting: Germany, between world wars — a time of sexual ambiguity, slippery loyalties and swastikas. Nothing to sing about, surely, but when “Cabaret” burst onto Broadway Nov. 20, 1966, it changed the face of musical theater.
So great was the applause for its opening number, “Willkommen,” actor Joel Grey tells The Post, that the cast stood stock-still, staring at their stage manager and wondering, “Should we do it again?” At last the applause subsided and the show went on. And on . . .
Now, many Tonys, world tours and a Liza Minnelli movie later, “Cabaret” returns to Studio 54, where the Roundabout Theatre last revived it in 1998. Back are nightclub singer Sally Bowles, writer Clifford Bradshaw and the oily Emcee, all trapped in the shadow of Hitler.
Here — drawn from conversations with past and present stars Grey and Alan Cumming, director Harold Prince, writer Joe Masteroff and composer John Kander — are tantalizing tidbits about this darkly brilliant classic, opening Thursday.
The original title spelled doom …
“In the beginning, the name of the show was ‘Welcome to Berlin,’ ” Masteroff says. “But all the ladies’ theater parties called up Hal [Prince] and said, ‘We couldn’t sell one ticket to that show!’ A lot of them were Jewish, sensible people, so we had to change it. I was the genius who thought up ‘Cabaret.’ ”
… Fraulein Schneider was played by someone who fled the Nazis …
In that first production, Lotte Lenya — the Roman Catholic-born wife of “Threepenny Opera” composer Kurt Weill — was cast as Fraulein Schneider, who forgoes love to save herself. “Lotte was our conscience,” Kander says. “She lived through it. We were self-conscious about having her play a character who gives up any emotional future by clinging to her property. But she said, ‘An entire country could not emigrate.’ We’re talking about someone who got out of Berlin 24 hours before they [would have] killed her. But she understood the people who made those compromises.”
… the Emcee was inspired by a dwarf …
Where did the elfin figure of the Emcee — our guide to decadence, so memorably played by both Grey and Cumming — come from? “Hal told me he had seen a dwarf in Germany when he was in the Army who had long lashes,” Grey says. “I think it was a transvestite dwarf.”
Prince begs to differ: “I’ve always eschewed that description. Let’s say ‘androgynous little fella.’ ” However you describe him, Prince found his prototype in a German club called Maxim’s with “a little tacky band and an emcee who was pathetic, vulgar and tragic,” surrounded by “three zaftig chorus girls in butterfly costumes doing their routines.” That emcee became a metaphor for Germany.
… the lyricist nearly had a breakdown …
During out-of-town tryouts, Prince turned the show’s three acts into two — a decision that nearly undid Fred Ebb, who wrote the lyrics for Kander’s music. “He thought we’d killed it,” Kander says. “There was a moment in the hotel room where it was like visiting a hospital patient: Joel Grey was lying on one side of him, stroking his head, and I was on the other, trying to assure him that [the show] wasn’t destroyed.” That night, “Cabaret” clicked at last, “Fred didn’t commit suicide, and we went on to write other things.” Including “Chicago.”
… Alan Cumming took a television legend by surprise …
In the 1998 revival, Cumming’s character literally pulled theatergoers out of their seats to join the action. “I’d go for the people who least wanted to,” he recalls. “[One night] I saw this old bloke sitting there and said, ‘C’mon, Grandad!’ Everyone was cheering and I thought, ‘Well, aren’t Americans nice to their elderly.’ I asked his name. ‘Walter Cronkite!’ he barked.” At an event several months later, the anchorman came toward Cumming, who braced for the worst. Said Cronkite: “May I have the pleasure of this dance?”
… and it all began with a lot of sex.
In 1925, future novelist Christopher Isherwood was kicked out of Cambridge University and went to Berlin. “He was gay,” Masteroff says, “and [Berlin] was the best place to go if you were looking for all kinds of sex — straight, gay and probably the kind I don’t know about.” There, Isherwood met the singer he called Sally Bowles in his collection “The Berlin Stories.”
“Will it matter a hundred years from now if you wrote that yarn or not?” the owner of his boardinghouse chided him. Nearly a century later, the answer is yes.
Some of our best actresses have been drawn to the role of Sally Bowles, the belle of Berlin. Here are a few of the most memorable.
Julie Harris
John Van Druten’s 1951 play “I Am a Camera” introduced theatergoers to Sally Bowles, and won Harris a Tony for it, too.
Judi Dench
Years before she became a Dame, the young Dench starred in “Cabaret” when it opened in 1968 in London. Composer John Kander proclaims her “probably the greatest Sally who ever walked the earth.”
Liza Minnelli
Thanks to Bob Fosse’s 1972 hit film, more people have likely heard Minnelli sing the title song than all the other Sallys combined. Her co-star, Joel Grey, calls her “the essence of Sally, and my personal favorite.”
Natasha Richardson
Her porcelain features obscured by heavy makeup, her voice raw, she co-starred with Alan Cumming in the ’98 revival. Accepting her Tony, she called the role “the most terrifying journey of my professional life.”
Michelle Williams
“I have zero experience,” this year’s Sally said recently about singing and dancing. But Masteroff pays her the highest compliment: The “Dawson’s Creek” star, he tells The Post, “is very like Julie Harris.”