Son of SDMB Musicals - Chicago

Cafe Society
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Have you seen the revamped Cabaret? The ending is a bit more disturbing.

Each time the MC comes out he’s wearing a long leather jacket that he takes off at some point to reveal another outfit, whether the “naughty lederhosen” of the opening number or the nothing/mooning/swastika booty at the end of the first act or the underwear of Two Ladies. At the end of the show the stage goes “white” (theater jargon meaning all the sets recede and it’s just basically a blank stage) and he’s wearing a concentration camp uniform with a yellow star and pink triangle
Makes it kind of hard to leave humming “Wilkommen”. But I managed.:wink:

The sexual orientation/nationality progression of Cabaret is interesting.

The novella Goodbye to Berlin: autobiographical story based on the experiences of Christopher Isherwood, a gay English writer (he’d had had experiences with women but counted himself gay) who lived in Berlin and was friends withwith an English lounge singer fictionalized as Sally Bowles. (I can’t remember the real woman’s name, but she received some notoriety from the book and its projects; she did not die in a concentration camp as is sometimes reported but returned to England, married, and settled down.) It was not a sexual relationship and the pregnancy she aborted was not by Isherwood’s character.

I’ve never seen I Am a Camera, the play/movie based on the book from which Cabaret was adapted, so I’m not sure what nationalities they used or if they delved into orientation.

When Cabaret premiered on Broadway it featured Cliff (Bert Convy), an American writer in Berlin, involved with an English Sally Bowles (Jill Haworth). Cliff was hetero. Joel Grey played the MC and won a Tony.

In the film adaptation, which is basically a hybrid of the original source and the play, Cliff (Michael York) is a bisexual English writer living with Sally (Liza Minnelli), who is American. Joel Grey played the MC and won an Oscar.

In the 1980s revival Cliff’s American and Sally’s English again, but the story is basically the same as the original: they’re straight. Joel Grey played the MC- rave reviews, won nothing (though Werner Klemperer received a nomination for the role of Schulz, the Jewish fruit seller in love with Fraulein Schneider).

In the revival, Cliff is American and Sally’s English, but Cliff’s now gay (or bisexual). Alan Cumming is a completely different from Joel Grey MC and wins the Tony. (There’s been talk of a movie on and off; it’d be interesting to see if Cumming would reprise and win an Oscar.) Also the nightclub changes: Joel Grey’s MC would be the toast of Berlin, while this one is set in the dingy transvestite dives of Isherwood’s experience.

Perhaps in the next incarnation Cliff and Sally will both be English and Cliff will be gay. Not that it doesn’t work the other ways.

Cool clip of both Cumming and Grey singing Wilkommen.

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His character introduced every one of the fantasy numbers - maybe he was a figment of Roxie’s imagination?

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But he was definitely playing piano the night Velma was arrested, and that was all real, save for the snippet of Roxie belting out “All That Jazz!” just before Casely taps her on the shoulder and they leave. The introductions, yeah, those were Roxie’s fervid imagination

Speaking of which, when I was running that number to make sure, something dawned on me I hadn’t noticed before. Velma sings All That Jazz! but Fred and Roxie leave before she finishes to go to Roxie’s apartment. They are seen – it looks like for the first time – by the nosy landlady and do the two-backed beast with to cuts to Velma completing her song. Fred dumps Roxie, she plugs him and is arrested. I had the impression that was all on the same night, but no: Velma’s been in jail for weeks and the D.A. tells Amos, “The landlady says [Casely]'s been burgling your place three times a week for the past month.” Sometime between the landlady spotting and the plugging we jumped ahead a month.

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My take on it has always been that the night they were in the club was the first time Casely & Roxie got together, and “a month later” he dumped her because she kept talking about meeting with his friend at the club who’d make her a star, and he couldn’t (or didn’t want to) keep up the lie any more.

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What anyrose said. There’s a bit in the dialog building up to the shooting where she says “Why did you take me to the club that night?” and he says “There was a guy in the band who owed me some money – I don’t know whatshisface.” (paraphrasing wildly, obviously.)

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Yup. I didn’t mean to sound like I thought it was an error, but rather a deliberate skip ahead in the story line. One I was blind to until now.

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I watched Chicago last night. It was kind of fun to do so, although doing so reminded me of why I didn’t particularly enjoy it the first time. Basically, I did not like all the cuts. twickster’s big thing for watchig musicals is Dance, mine is Music. Music with catchy lyrics, zing-y tunes, something with character.

All the frantic cutting between reality and fantasy distracted from the music. It also confused me, especially the first time I saw it. This movie would have been far more to my taste if they had cut way back on the Razzle Dazzle.

I listened to 20 minutes of the commentary–not all back to back-- and was impressed by the description of “All That Jazz”–they deliberately choreographed the onstage dancing to parallel the off-stage stuff with Roxie and the guy. When I say I was impressed, it was in a “ooh, how clever” sense, not in a “Now I really appreciate this”. They intended that Roxie and Velma’s act be real, but were not upset that some found this more ambiguous.

My favorite song by far is “Cell Block Tango”–and part of that is because the choreography made sense to me–wasn’t just flash-y stuff.

For a straight female with no interest in looking at boobbage–I was surprisingly annoyed by how flat Roxie’s chest was–and I recall that from the first time I saw it, too.
I also didn’t like how naive she was at the beginning.

My first exposure to Chicago was seeing it live, which I’ve talked about upthread, but I want to emphasize how minimalistic that production was–very little set, costumes were see-through black fabric, mostly, not particularly period, etc. I understand why some of that wouldn’t have worked in a movie, but I’m not sure that the degree of flash and dazzle that they employed was either neccessary or desirable. I think they could have done a good movie without so much cutting by choosing either to emphasize the gritty realism (despite songs being sung and danced to) or emphasize the fantasy–you know, pick one–either show the disappearing act of the ballerina or show the Hungyak being hung for real, not both at almost once–it’s distracting.

I heard a guy on NPR recently talking about some movie (oh, of course, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ) which is “Life is like a box of special effects”[/end Forest Gump impression]. Chicago was rather like that–Life is not just a box of Razzle Dazzle, and too much razzle dazzle detracts from the music and the dancing–and those are what us true Musical Lovers look for in musicals.