CABARET
The Berlin-Musical

Welcome to the Kit Kat Club right next to the Chancellor’s office! The TIPI AM KANZLERAMT becomes a cabaret, hosting the world-famous musical about life, passion and despair in Berlin under the darkening skies of approaching fascism.

Based on true events and real lives, CABARET portrays the experiences of the English writer Christopher Isherwood, who lived in the Berlin district of Schöneberg from 1929 to 1933, making real life the source of this highly sensual theatrical experience.

The story of the carefree nightclub-singer Sally Bowles in the glittering yet shady milieu of the Golden Twenties immortalised the city of Berlin as the city of historical fractures, caught between glamour and the gutter, between dreams and despair.

Please note that the dialogues are in German language.

Director and choreographer: Vincent Paterson
Musical Director of the premiere: Adam Benzwi
Associate for Vincent Paterson: Mette Berggreen
Script: Joe Masteroff – after the play “I am a Camera” by John van Druten and the stories by Christopher Isherwood
Music: John Kander 
Song lyrics: Fred Ebb (German texts by Robert Gilbert)

In the year 1929 the young American writer Clifford Bradshaw arrives in Berlin, searching for material for his novel. He rents a cheap room in Fräulein Schneider’s boarding house and spends New Year’s Eve in the Kit Kat Club, upon Ernst-Ludwig’s invitation, an acquaintance he made during his journey.

The Kit Kat Club is one of the many temples to pleasure that Berlin had to offer in the 1920s. A place for longings of every kind, where you could live for a moment in the utopia of erotic and political freedom. In the darkness, the faded filament bulbs of the Cabaret turn into a glamorous lustre, which sucks in the restless night wanderers of the metropolis in its glaring red gullet.

Here, a louche MC introduces the attraction of the evening: Fräulein Sally Bowles, an English night club singer. Sally and Cliff quickly get to know one another in the permissive, relaxed atmosphere of the club. She is looking for a place to stay, he is looking for an aim in life and already on the following day she moves in with him – disregarding his views on the matter.

The friendly fruit merchant Herr Shultz also lives in Fräulein Schneider’s boarding house and spoils his landlady with exotic fruit. Just as their tender love story leads to an engagement, Herr Schultz, a Jew, is for the first time confronted with the hatred of the emerging Nazi movement: resigned and afraid, Fräulein Schneider makes a difficult decision regarding their forthcoming wedding ...

Cliff is appalled at the burgeoning Fascism and wants to leave Berlin as soon as possible, with the now pregnant Sally. But, just like the shrill, cynical MC, Sally is uninterested in politics – for her, life is only a Cabaret.

One is travelling through, in flight, in constant fear, and so in the end each packs his bags. Sally gives away her fur coat to pay for an abortion, and returns to the Kit Kat Club. And Cliff, shortly before the Nazis come to power, leaves Berlin. No one as yet knows where the journey will lead to ...