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| The Cast of the revival of "Cabaret" (photo: Providence Performing Arts Center) |
Somewhere
between Mason City, Iowa (forever enthroned in our minds as the
birthplace of Meredith Wilson and The
Music Man),
and the Providence Performing Arts Center, an actress by the name of
Alison Ewing spent quite a bit of time on various stages in the
Kander and Ebb smash hit musical, Cabaret. She's performed
several roles over the past couple of decades, including the part of
Lulu on Broadway, the first National Tour and in Paris. In the
current National Tour about to open in Providence (January 26-31),
she's taking on the role of Fraulein Kost, who entertains (so to
speak) a steady stream of visiting sailors in the boarding house
where the lead character Sally Bowles (for which Alison is the
understudy in this company) lives. Along the way she's also appeared
in such shows as Mamma Mia!, Flashdance, Ain't Nothin' but the
Blues, and Sweet Charity. She also plays in the “all-girl”
band as Fritzie.
As anyone familiar with the original Broadway production
or the subsequent film version will recall, this is the story of
Sally (Andrea Goss) when she meets Clifford Bradshaw (Lee Aaron
Rosen) at the Kit Kat Klub as she sings “Don't Tell Mama”. It is
Germany just as the Nazis are rising to power. Based on the novel
Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, in turn based on
John Van Druten's play I Am a Camera, it takes place in the
raunchy Berlin night club with a bizarre Emcee (Randy Harrison).
Bradshaw, an American writer, also meets Ernst Ludwig (Ned Noyes) who
offers him work and suggests he room in a boardinghouse run by
Fraulein Schneider (Shannon Cochran). Later Sally arrives on Cliff's
doorstep, having been thrown out of her apartment. The first act ends
with a song that becomes a march with some sinister overtones,
“Tomorrow Belongs to Me”. In the second act, Sally and Cliff have
fallen in love, and she confesses she's pregnant. Meanwhile, Fraulein
Schneider catches her boarder Fraulein Kost (Ewing, as noted above)
with her turnstyle of admirers, but Kost reminds her she's had her
own dalliance with her Jewish suitor Herr Schultz (Mark Nelson).
Sally tells Cliff she's gone through with an abortion, and he decides
to leave Berlin, leaving her behind to sing of her choice of a life
of freedom, unaware of the imminent descent of the Nazi
stormtroopers. As he leaves on the train, Cliff begins to write of
his experiences “at the end of the world”.
One of the anticipated delights of this stage version is
the reinstatement of the romantic relationship between the landlady
Fraulein Schneider and her lovely songs with Herr Schultz, “It
Couldn't Please Me More (Pineapple)” and “Married”, both
entirely cut from the movie. There is also a new song written for the
Broadway revival, “I Don't Care Much”. In this iteration of the
revival, Ewing is thrilled to be continuing in a show she has grown
to love more and more, though she confesses that her “wannabe”
role would be that of Mrs. Lovett in Sondheim's Sweeney Todd.
Meanwhile, she's having a ball, but, as the all-female band on stage
might put it, “Don't Tell Mama”.
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