How Broadway’s ‘Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club’ Pulls Off Its Audacious, Sensual 75-Minute Prologue
18.04.2024 - 21:39
/ variety.com
Brent Lang Executive Editor “No extraneous commotion,” Jordan Fein, the associate director of “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club,” beseeches the small army of construction crew members who are drilling, hammering and carrying planks of wood around him, not to mention the half-dozen musicians and dancers waiting to rehearse. It’s roughly two weeks before the revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s “Cabaret” opens its doors to the public, and Fein is fine-tuning the prologue, an hour-and-15-minute immersion into club culture that precedes the show. It’s a daring piece of theatrical provocation that has helped to make the Broadway production one of the season’s hottest (and most expensive) tickets.
It’s also unusual. For this version of “Cabaret,” playgoers are encouraged to arrive long before the opening number to visit the Kit Kat Club. There, they can have a drink and walk through a series of spaces, where they will observe performers dancing and playing music that is sensual, captivating and intended to loosen everyone up.
“We needed something to serve as a bridge between the outside world and the performance of ‘Cabaret,’ so we came up with this idea of a prologue,” says Rebecca Frecknall, the show’s director. “We needed to do something to make this space feel alive from the moment that the audience crossed the threshold into it.” During rehearsals on that March afternoon, a member of the prologue ensemble, Will Ervin Jr., is bare-chested but for a ruffled collar transported from the Elizabethan era by way of Studio 54. After adjusting his kneepads, he drops to a headstand.
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